In two months time, eleven 60x40 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week canvas pieces were purchased by the fantastic and fashionably educated crowd of the Peacock Cafe customers in Georgetown. The first time around, three pieces were sold before I could even hang them up.
Since I live in Clarendon, I thought I could also hang them up here. This time, they were on display at the dry cleaners located near my building. I thought it would be a good experiment. And it's a nice place actually and the wall was perfect for a single 60x40 piece. So I started off with the Lhuillier piece (top seller along with Anna Wintour). Their customers were excited to see the piece, but it did not sell. After a few weeks, we switched it with the Anna Wintour piece. The customers recognized the person, but again, it did not sell. The Siriano piece followed and nobody said anything. This weekend, I switched it to the DVF piece to see if anyone would recognize it. The first customer actually chatted with me because ironically enough, she was just picking up one of her DVF dresses from the cleaners. This led me to believe that the customers are pretty knowledgeable of the designers I was displaying and that they just weren't interested in buying a 60x40 canvas piece.
The owners of the dry cleaning place are very excited about my work and they love seeing it in their place of business. But they also mentioned that their women customers are less luxurious in their clothes than the men. They have about 2 or 3 women that bring in the high-dollar clothes, but for the most part, their women customers are of the Banana Republic/Ann Taylor types. There's nothing wrong with that, but I did find it a little odd that Clarendon did not have the Lhuillier/DVF crowd. I thought for sure by now that this young neighborhood would have reacted more positively to the pieces and that eventually, I would have gotten at least an email.
Could it be that they're displayed in a dry cleaner place or that the dry cleaner place is in Clarendon? And who would have thought the men in Clarendon would have higher priced clothes than the women?
On a side note, these are the current top sellers. And for the upcoming S/S 2012 collection, I'm going to see if Michael Kors, Tory Burch, or Vera Wang can sell in Clarendon. =)
- Anna Wintour/Herrera - 3; Lhuillier - 3
- Legs/NY Fashion Week - 2; Siriano - 2
- DVF - 1
Walter,
This is such an interesting observation. I am happy that your talents are traversing the high end cities of NYC to the dry cleaners in Clarendo :) I will have to stop by the next time I need to dry clean my Banana Republic dress!
Cheers,
Susannah