As someone who owns quite a bit of designer shit, I would be fairly happy saying that essentially every designer brand is overpriced at retail. They are most often priced with the assumption that the price will be reduced in sales at some point. Unless an item is hyped enough or sold in low enough volumes to sell out before the sales hit, it's never really worth paying retail (unless you're rich enough that it's worth paying the retail premium just to have the item earlier in the season). If you buy at 50%+ off, and buy designs that you couldn't really get anywhere else, plenty of designer brands are decent buys. Still not the best raw value propositions in terms of "quality" for the price, but designs are potentially far more interesting. More on reddit.com

At a certain point you have to divorce price from quality. A $1000 jumper is probably not going to be that much nicer fabric or stitching than a $400 one. Objectively this price is not "worth" this level of money in terms of what you get physically.

When considering dropping this kind of money on designer pieces it should be more motivated by the specific design of the piece, by the way the designer has used the materials to realise this design and how the piece fits in with your wardrobe and the designer's "world". If you just like the breton stripes and want a high quality jumper this one is not "worth it". If this exact jumper gives you lust, or if you saw it styled in a lookbook/shoot/runway and it gave you a dozen ideas for how to build outfits around it then, or if you are a huge fan of YSL (even these days) and have a strong relationship with the brand then it might be.

At the highest ends like this though you're paying a lot more than one ought to at retail due to the demographics involved (e.g. the people who will tell their shopping assistant to bring them a few jumpers to try on and then they pick the couple they like ignoring the price or the desiger/fabrics/). Whether to pay full retail for a designer piece or not is your call - for most I fear it's not a reasonable option but there are some where I'd happily pay full retail (Stephan Schneider, Dries Van Noten) but plenty more where I would only consider them on sale (e.g. Margiela).

The concept of "worth it" is a really bad angle to approach these things at in my opinion. Is paying £xx,xxxx for a painting "worth it"? No one can really tell you a firm yes or no unless they're talking in terms of investment. Is paying £x,xxx for a designer chair "worth it"? etc etc.

Spend time with the designer's work online, on the runway and in person and decide for yourself what you'd be happy to pay for their pieces. Don't just buy pieces because of the designer or because of the price though. It's a relationship between you, your money and the designer.

More on reddit.com

Many luxury brands have really great quality of construction and materials, and are also key drivers of innovation and variation in fashion (reasons vary and may be worth their own discussion). I find that most luxury brands have a specialty type of items they make that they excel at, but also produce a bunch of other stuff that won’t necessarily be any good. Case in point: Alexander McQueen has impeccable tailoring, really great knitwear and their t-shirts are comfortable and durable. However, their shoes are not particularly durable, particularly the soles - stain easily and get rubbed off fast. Pretty much all of them are overpriced for clothing, but there are reasons for it that are complex and interesting to discuss too. The value isn’t only in the garment itself, but emotional and cultural, which is why so many people want them and buy them. Each luxury brand is a unique case study both culturally and business-wise, and it’s a lot of fun to explore and discuss this. I personally like brands and I am working towards buying into pieces that they are famous for/do best, while mostly disregarding the clutter that is there to make money on. More on reddit.com

I figured as we approach 700k subs it was worth a visit to go through some old posts and comments to pull out some important or interesting. Either answering questions that continue to pop up or something that is worth a revisit. If there is enough interest this will become a series. Feel free to nominate old posts/comments that you would like to see discussed again. More on reddit.com