Luxury boutique owner slams mainstream fashion retail
The founder of Aboudabibazar, a small chain of independent luxury boutiques in Paris, Patrick Aboukrat, has issued a hard-hitting critique of the fashion retail sector. He said many mainstream brands had abandoned the concept of ‘Made in France’ to go in search of higher margins.
This has meant producing clothes and accessories in ever-larger volumes and inundating the streets of cities with fast fashion shops that “all look the same”.
He said this approach had distorted the role of shop-owners, whose main aim is to delight the public by “welcoming people into an original environment with a personalised selection of products”.
Aboudabibazar has three boutiques in Paris, in which it stocks clothes, shoes and accessories made, mostly, by small designer workshops based in France. It withdrew its online sales site in 2019, saying it wanted to have face-to-face contact with its customers instead. Shoe brands it works with include Bosabo and Patricia Blanchet. Oakwood leather jackets are on sale in the shops, as are Herbert Frère & Soeur bags and belts.
“Big brands and big retailers have allowed themselves to be dragged into this ‘promotions’ dance,” Mr Aboukrat said, “of ‘ventes privées’, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This has made it necessary for them to make more and more product.”
He said he hoped one good thing to have come out of the crisis imposed by covid-19 might be to convince companies to return to a calendar that is much more in tune with the real seasons of the year, and a fashion industry that is more engaged with consumers and more environmentally responsible.
