RIP to the Investment Buy

It wasn't always a marketing ploy, but it certainly is now.

Photo by Alyssa Strohmann on Unsplash

I thought I’d take the intensity down a notch this week– it’s all been a bit antsy for a few, hasn’t it? Lost laptops, infuriating husbands, children who say fuck off. Lordy. Because I sit with this essay mentally in my inbox for the week, it comes to define the tenor of my seven days. If I write about feeling angry or scared or curious about something, I live in that context. And I could do with a break from the high stakes for a sec, as I’m sure you can too. Fear not, I’ll be back with a DMC in short order, I just need to dial the aggro down a tad.

So today I wanted to talk about how we quantify investment buys. A nice little bit of late-stage capitalism to mix things up. Once upon a time, I was in the business of trying to persuade shoppers to part with large sums of cash for beautiful things. There were many ways which my band of merry journalists and I tried to justify punchy price tags as we sat in our free shoes talking about £1700 ‘forever’ coats we’d never be able to afford. Mea culpa.

The thinking behind the investment purchase was always to shop smarter. The original message was based on thinking passed down from our nans – in short, if you buy cheap, you’re gonna buy twice. My own grandmother told me that in the early 50s, a woollen winter coat would cost at least ¾ of your month’s salary. The average monthly wage for a full-time employee in London in 2023 was £3,488 (outside of london £2,334). So, let’s presume you’re a Londoner spending ¾ of your paycheck on that coat—you’d be talking £2,616, which would put you well into Maxmara territory. Of course, our forebears had just the one coat which would last a literal lifetime. It would be of sufficient quality to not bobble or go thin at the elbows and able to literally weather the storms, day in and day out. Investment meant investment. At the beginning of the noughties, in the early days of fashion’s death spiral into throwaway, investmentism was therefore a well-intentioned rejoinder. At least we were trying to do something positive to counter the inexorable slide towards PrettyLittleThing.com.

Of course, things didn’t exactly stay focused on such worthy objectives. Instead of influencing you to buy just the one expensive coat to last you from now ‘til your funeral, investment shopping has evolved to represent an endless stream of eye-wateringly expensive clothes in excess. It has shaped a world in which everyone on Instagram seems to own a £27k mini-Kelly (90% of the median full time take home pay for the U.K. just as a reality check). Stealth wealth, quiet luxury. Every single piece of the closet jigsaw puzzle immaculately costly. Quality yes, but quantity too. We’re not just talking about a few pricey tentpoles to elevate the rest of your wardrobe, it’s the whole job lot, organised into this mythical and ever-expanding ‘capsule’. The perfect edit for you to buy just once, serving you for every conceivable context ad infimum. I recently purchased an expensive pair of snow boots as an example of what could be construed as a fashion investment. As far as I can remember, a flurry hasn’t settled on the ground here in London since my first son was born seven years ago. But it’s reassuring to know that I have that one ticked off my capsule list.