A few weeks ago, Gab Waller received a request from a regular client — a 40-something Californian with a lot of money to burn: a series of screen grabs of every dress from the brand new Chanel ready-to-wear line-up.
That client had one instruction for Waller, a sourcing guru who can unearth sold-out must-haves from almost any designer. “I want them all,” she said.
Welcome to the world of the VVICS — the very very important clients, who can casually drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on designer gear every few months — and their personal shoppers, who make sure that every fashion desire is catered to.
In the case of this particular client, she mixes her shopping up — sometimes going direct at her favorite designer stores, and for the harder to find pieces she turns to Waller.
“It’s the time and convenience of it,” Waller told The Post of her search for all the Chanel dresses. “She didn’t give me a set deadline, but I found one this past week in France for $20,000. The ready wear is typically the most expensive.”
With at least ten dresses on her shopping list, that client’s bill will likely hit over $200,000 — and that’s just for this season’s styles alone. With Chanel also topping the list for some of the most expensive clothing in the world right now.
But Waller’s Chanel-obsessed client isn’t alone. As The Post recently reported, die-hard fashionistas have been fighting to get their hands on the first ever collection by Chanel’s brand new designer Matthew Blazy.
And Waller says almost 50% of the requests she’s fielding from her most important clients right now are for the brand. “Chanel is dominating in every category, every aspect.” The only other brand that even comes close? Celine.
Waller, of course, is just one of the personal shoppers on whom deep-pocketed fashionistas depend — and these days they’re less 60-year-old Upper East Sider, and more 40-something self-made businesswoman, or married into money, with multiple homes and who’ll spend the summer in Europe.
“Every part of her world is private: she flies private, and she doesn’t post about it when she does. And yes, she’s at the fashion weeks,” Waller explains — noting that many VVICs are also invited by their favored brands to sit front row among the celebs, as they are responsible for so much business.
Lisa Frohlich, a stylist and personal shopper who’s a Hamptons mainstay, notes that many of her clients don’t even have favorite fashion houses — they have favorite designers, who they’ll follow to wherever they’re working.
Meaning, say, a brand could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) in business annually if their VVICs aren’t happy with whoever they hire.
The departure of Pieter Muller from Alaia, for example, will mean one of her clients ditches a brand she used to obsess over, and she’ll likely defect to his new perch at Versace. That woman is a well-known 50-something businesswoman in New York, who asked Frohlich to source a constant stream of the brand’s Hip bag, the woven leather bucket style that costs at least $3,000 per bag.
“They were gifts for her houseguests, but she wouldn’t come to the store. I had to go to her house and drop them off, beautifully wrapped,” Frohlich told The Post. “One summer alone, I must have purchased 10 of them.”
Frohlich’s clients are devotees of The Row, the brand which is “driving the bus on the VVICs now, because pieces sell out and you have to get on the wait list.” And yes, that’s even when a trench coat can cost $12,000. The other brand that’s managed to gain – and game – the attention of VVICs whom Frohlich helps is Dolce & Gabbana. It creates a floral pattern of the season: red poppy, perhaps, or lily, or rose.
“If you don’t follow Dolce closely, you have no idea, but the VVIC wants to be in the latest print, nothing from three seasons past,” said Frohlich, who sold a dozen $1,800 cotton shift dresses in one weekend for that very reason. “It wasn’t overpriced – it was a steal in Dolce terms – and they all liked that it was the new print.”
One of the most important personal shoppers in Beverly Hills — virtually a household name — asked for anonymity for fear of backlash from brands or clients has such clout in the VVIC space that when Nordstrom poached her from Neiman Marcus last year, it gave her a namesake space in Beverly Hills as her HQ. For her clients, it’s all about “super special things” now – that one-off that means you’ll never risk being seen in the same ’fit as a fellow charity gala-goer.
Sure, Balenciaga bags are nice, but a real VVIC will secure the brand’s beaded dress from this sought-after personal shopper, or a punched-up Paco Rabanne, which combines its signature chain mail with embroidery.
“They’re not one-offs, they’re ready to wear, but they’re just at that closest edge to couture,” she told The Post. “But not couture price.”
Her clients’ verdict on whether Jonathan Anderson’s arrival at Dior is a hit or a miss? Definitely the former.
“All the new tassel bags are incredibly sought after,” she said.
Her customers have followed fired Gucci designer Alessandro Michele to his new home at Valentino, too. “It’s the only place you can have that creativity that’s a bit outrageous – he kind of owns that moment.”
This personal shopper’s store is also stashed with high-end vintage, a nod to the increasing interest in swanky secondhand that high-end wranglers of her caliber are seeing. NYC-based Timothy Pope has watched the same shift, albeit with a stern warning.
“Real vintage, not from last season. We’re talking about clothes from 20 years ago,” Pope explained to The Post. “It’s Chanel by Karl Lagerfeld, Jean-Paul Gaultier from Gaultier.”
The younger a VVIC, the more vintage-obsessed they are.
“The granddaughters of some of my clients get hot and bothered buying original Jil Sander,” Pope said.
Waller agreed.
She’s seen a similar surge in the last couple of years, while Frohlich notes that it’s next to impossible to sell new jewelry to this niche. “They want pieces that have been redesigned, estate jewelry or heirlooms, an old stone of their grandmother’s that’s been reset.”
Pope has also been a fixture of the couture shows for almost 40 years. The prices of such gowns have increased exponentially over that period, he explains, which deters even the most ardent clothes horse.
“It’s three times more expensive than it used to be. The CEOs say the costs have skyrocketed, but the costs of what?” he asked, pointing to simple couture pantsuits that now might cost close to $300,000.
“It’s the absolute pinnacle of vulgarity. So, are my clients buying the way they used to buy? No,” Pope told The Post. “Are they in the market? Absolutely.”
So that’s what deep-pocketed designer devotees are buying – but what are they ditching from their closets? What’s in and what’s out, as “Project Runway” always reminds us, can turn on a dime for the fashpack.
“The Row has gotten a little out of control,” says one insider of the Olsen twins’ label, as famous for its sky-high prices as its luxe construction – think simple white cotton tees that cost more than 500 bucks. Even wealthy women balk at price-gouging like that. Indie favorite Khaite is too sniffy even for fellow fashionistas. “You walk in there, and it’s like walking into an exclusive museum, it’s a little too standoffish.”
There’s one label more than any other, though, which marks out someone as a cut-price couture-chaser. “The VVIC isn’t going to Louis Vuitton because it screams Louis Vuitton,” they said. “Louis is out.”
That avid interest in Chanel that Waller identified may well be a flash in the pan, too, warns another veteran.
“People will buy Chanel because it’s his first collection,” they said of designer Mathieu Blazy’s supposedly well-reviewed debut. “It was a good start, not a great one, and it wasn’t a win.”
Most agree, though, that one label above all has lost its luxe luster among true fashionistas: Gucci. It’s virtually flatlining, said Waller.
“I’m lucky to get a request a month for it at this stage,” she said.
And if VVICs are fashion’s temperature gauge, Gucci’s is all but frozen out.
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