What is the Price of Loyalty?

“I may not be an influencer, but I was the first person to buy a Schlumberger Parrot Brooch after the Beyoncé act came out,” cries Bitsy Von Muffling in last week’s episode of And Just Like That, upon discovering that she wasn’t invited to the Tiffany’s tea-time event (*spoiler alert: it got lost in the spam*).

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Please, they owe me breakfast, lunch, and dinner!” she adds, before storming away to send the flagship store manager her purchase totals for last year. And just like that (sorry!), we were once again left wondering what exactly these people do for a living. 

Yet, bad television aside (that we all hate-watch nonetheless), there’s some truth to Bitsy’s blatantly bourgeois meltdown that mirrors the behavior of the one percent. Lauren Sánchez’s Hermès Porosus Crocodile Kelly Midas, which she lugged to her wedding to Jeff Bezos in Venice last month, features a handle fashioned out of 18K yellow gold. 

Not gold-plated. Solid gold. The handle alone weighs 183 grams.

And like Sánchez’s Midas touch (see what I did there?), there’s the cautionary tale of Buzz Bissinger, sports journalist and best-selling author of Friday Night Lights, who likens his addiction to shopping (specifically, Gucci) to drugs or gambling: “the futile feeding of the bottomless beast and the unavoidable psychological implications, the immediate hit of the new that feels like an orgasm and the inevitable coming-down.”

“Luxury is fundamentally a state of mind,” says John Scott, former president of The Orient Express. Luxury, however, is also a multi-billion-dollar moneymaking machine that feeds off the loyalty of its customers.

The only question is: do you qualify?

Loyalty Over Royalty

To Jeffrey Berk, CEO of Miami-based reseller Privé Porter, there are two kinds of Birkin buyers: those who are prepared to do the required “groveling at Hermès” and those who aren’t. His clients include pop-culture royalty – Cardi B, Offset, Kris Jenner – and literal royalty (“a Jordanian prince, a Saudi royal …”). But it’s not these people – “who don’t want to walk into Hermès and be told what to do” – who classify as loyal customers.

Instead, it’s Chicago-based philanthropist Laura Sachs, a self-proclaimed “Chanel girl through and through” who celebrated the births of her three daughters by wearing a new pink Chanel jacket on each trip home from the hospital that will belong to them once they’re older. Suzanne Saperstein, “a relic on the scene” at the Paris front rows since the ’90s, counts designers Gianfranco Ferré and Jean Paul Gaultier among her friends.

Mrs. Sachs, for instance, regularly makes it to Chanel’s haute couture guest list, with accommodations at The Ritz’s Coco Chanel suite in Paris, and a seat next to Pharrell at brand dinners. Mrs. Agha’s VIC invites were extended to her two daughters. Gucci Salon opened as an appointment-only VIP store in Los Angeles, and the brand has also flown clients to Coachella or hosted special movie screenings in the Royal Suite of Savoy London.

Louis Vuitton and Brunello Cucinelli have opened similar brand experience stores in the Zhang Garden of Shanghai and Casa Cucinelli in New York, respectively. At the same time, Saks Fifth Avenue offered exclusive VIP invites to the Oscars and Wimbledon. “It’s what money can’t buy,” says chief customer experience officer Isabel May of Mytheresa.

But is simply having (obscene amounts of) money enough?

Till Death Do Us Part?

According to Oxford, loyalty is “a strong feeling of support or allegiance.”

And yes, my boo, you can rest assured that I’ll be right by your side, through thick and thin (you know, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part – the whole shebang).

But loyalty, or specifically, brand loyalty, is a little more, well, transactional. 

“There are new ways to cultivate clients, more money being spent on clients, more clients spending more money,” says writer Amy Fine Collins, a VIC herself. Nor is it always clearly defined how one becomes one in the first place.

Of course, it goes without saying that “loyal customer” or VIC are monikers generally reserved for frequent shoppers. This often stipulates a healthy and regular spending profile and, more often than not, a deeply entrenched relationship with one or more Sales Associates (SAs).

In fact, the very idea of preferential treatment that’s so widespread now emerged during COVID-19, when top shoppers stopped visiting the stores, and brands had to go to them—to their homes, and later, to private dinners with Cate Blanchett, rarefied Ritz suites, Palm Beach pop-up activations, and private runway shows in The White Lotus–esque destinations.

Yet, even with those unspoken spending expectations – at the likes of Chanel, Dior, and Louis Vuitton, “$100K doesn’t do anything anymore,” says an L.A.-based stylist, “now it’s $200K a year” – even if you belong to that 2% that, according to Bain, drives 40% of luxury sales, you can still be *gasps* refused.

 The Real Housewives, for instance, with their uniform sheath dresses and shopping bags, have long belonged in this category. “The customer driving global luxury is quite tacky in many cases, and no one really admits it,” confides a fashion investor. Hermès faces an antitrust lawsuit for refusing Birkins to buyers. To amplify that “I don’t belong here” first-timer FOMO, some brands employ plebeian-snubbing snobby sales associates to drive sales!

“Having money isn’t enough anymore. You have to embody what the brand wants people to see,” says image consultant and stylist Nolan Meader.

Loyalty – But at What Cost?

“Fashion has never been more relevant in mainstream popular culture than now,” write Tony Wang and Michael Yeung of 1Granary.

And it’s access—and insider access—that has become the cool new currency. Louis Pisano of the Substack Discoursted unveiled last week her investigation into the machinations of the Paris Fashion Week black market, a “bizarre economy of selling access, where a Chanel invitation can allegedly command €10,000 or more.”

But how different is it really from the mechanism of Vogue 100, an invitation-only $100,000 a year sorority that allows members exclusive access to Madame Wintour herself?

Plus, these getaways – to the Monaco Grand Prix, to St. Moritz to ski, to Art Basel Miami – allow buyers a respite from the one-dimensional flatness of buying via the internet, as well as a break from the monotony of escaping their usual lunches and luncheons. These are places where they actually get to wear their outrageously overpriced and ostentatiously fabulous acquisitions, and maybe even show off a bit in the ’gram – quiet luxury be darned.

This pandering to the one-percenters, however, also highlights increasing income disparities. VIP-only stores, by definition, are discriminatory, as is The Row’s decision to eschew phones at its fashion presentations. And what previously amounted to a 1x-1.5x pre-spend at Hermès – or “Birkin Bait,” as The Notorious Pink defines, “money that you have spent so that you will be invited to spend more” – has now jumped to 3x to 5x more. 

But even that $15,700 Samarcande Chess set in leather and sapodilla wood, at the end of the day, isn’t guaranteed to land you a Birkin.

Yet, you choose to remain loyal. Because that, dear reader, is the price of loyalty, and this loyalty, in turn, confers status. As Pisano writes, “if status is the dream, someone will always be selling the fantasy.”