Beth Buccini, a partner in Hermes Handbags in SoHo, welcomes shoppers who rush the selling season. “You feel their frenzy,” she said. “You feel it in the bottom line.” Ms. Buccini attributes a 27 percent spike in the sales over the same period a year ago in large part to her pre-buy business.
An accelerated fall selling cycle, which kicks off as early as February, just after the fall collections are shown, also lends an element of edge to shopping that wasn’t there before. Eager to Hermes Wallets their quarry, clients besiege favorite stores from late winter through July, when the merchandise begins trickling in. “One woman called me three times in a single day,” Mr. Mahler said. “Maybe that’s indicative of the obsessive personality of this city and of our time.”
Or maybe it is simply the fashion civilian’s response to an information glut. Style intelligence, once mainly the preserve of fashion professionals, is now accessible to anyone with an AOL account. Dominic Marcheschi, an owner of Blake, a Chicago boutique that sells cutting-edge designs by Burberry Handbags, explained that before the advent of fashion on the Internet, “it was more, ‘We’re bringing them the fashion news from New York and Europe.’ Now they get it on their own.”
And pounce. John Eshaya, the vice president of women’s fashion at Ron Herman Melrose, an influential Los Angeles boutique, said, “They see it on Burberry Wallets, and 10 minutes later it’s downloaded. They know their clothes, and they know who carries them. They tell you, ‘It’s Marni, look Number 8. I want it. Buy it for me.’ ”
Chanel Handbags is the type of request few merchants are prepared to refuse. Some, like Mr. Eshaya, plead on their clients’ behalf for looks already sold out by the manufacturers. “We’ve had situations where certain pieces had to be recut,” he said.
Armed with advance style intelligence, “many women are feeling a sense of entitlement,” said Ms. Danziger, whose book, “Let Them Eat Cake” (2005), examines the marketing of luxury goods. “It’s ‘I can call the store like a celebrity. I can get Fake Handbags.’ ”
Ikram Goldman of Ikram, a leading fashion boutique in Chicago, rarely hesitates to honor even the most exacting request, going out of her way to track down the client’s dress or bag or boot, down to its precise color and fabric. “They want to be pampered,” Ms. Goldman said. The most dedicated shoppers are often the most rigorous. Deanna Randall, a partner in a New York knitwear company, regularly shops at Replica Handbags and counts herself among the devout. “I can read the line sheets,” Ms. Randall said, referring to showroom handouts with miniaturized sketches of each piece in a collection. “I know who I am.” She follows the progress of favorite designers like Stella McCartney, Junya Watanabe, Giorgio Armani and this year, Alberta Ferretti, having set her sights on a short Ferretti skirt for fall.
Ms. Randall declined to say how much she spends in advance of each season but allowed somewhat dryly, “If you’re on a tight budget, you don’t hone in early.” But even if she felt strapped, she probably would not wait for the sales. “I’ve always bought early,” Ms. Randall said, adding with the kind of Louis Vuitton Handbags only long experience can confer, “The early pieces are the best.”