A Call to Arms

Shopping is rarely easy. Between the salespeople, the dressing rooms, and the clothes, it’s a chore to find something that fits and flatters. This is especially true when your body doesn’t mesh with what the designers are offering. When you’re not a perfect size 6, shopping can be aggravating — more an exercise in frustration than an exercise in delight.

I was reminded of this while on the hunt for a dress. My husband and I were invited to a wedding in Napa Valley.  It was going to be a glamorous, fabulous affair, and I needed a dress that was up to the occasion.

On a quest for the perfect outfit, I went to all the logical places a New Yorker would visit. Bergdorf’s. Saks. Barney’s. I traveled from 5th Avenue to Madison Avenue.  Finally, I spotted the dress of my dreams on display in the Gucci window. It was purple silk, with a sexy, but not outrageous V-neck, a flattering empire waist, and an above the knee length. I don’t normally shop at Gucci, but I was desperate to own this dress.

I went inside the store, past the cases of jewelry, past the bags and the shoes, and found the dress on a rack on the second floor. The price tag was daunting (over $2K) but I rationalized the expense, knowing I’d wear the dress many times. When one of the black-clad salespeople wandered over, I asked her to bring me a size 14. Without blinking, she said that it was only available through size 10. 

I was shocked. My size is hardly extraordinary. It’s the size of the average American woman. By going only as high as size 10, Gucci is consciously excluding about 2/3 of their potential customers. How do their shareholders feel about that? Moreover, they are reinforcing unhealthy notions of body size. The implied message is that above a size 10, women are too big to look good in Gucci.

While I accept that companies may have policies that ignore some potential customers, the fact is, while Gucci may not want to sell me a dress, they DO want to sell me accessories. Which raises an obvious question:

If Gucci thinks I’m too big to wear their clothes, why should I wear their shoes or carry their bags?

We need to rethink our relationship with clothing designers. Before, if we couldn’t find designer clothes that fit, we would buy an accessory as a way of “dressing up” whatever we bought elsewhere. It was a compromise, and we settled. Now, we must reconsider this policy because it enables the designers to continue leaving our needs unsatisfied. Moreover, there’s a simple solution. If we can’t get clothes from a designer, we shouldn’t get bags from them either.

Which is why I created BoycottTheBag.com.

I know I’m not alone. I know that there are millions of women just like me — frustrated by the way designers like Gucci ignore our needs while still trying to profit from us. Gucci insults us with their clothes, while simultaneously seeking our money for their extremely lucrative leather goods. If this seems far-fetched, it isn’t.  Leather goods are the highest margin items sold by most designers, and they accounted for 54% of Gucci’s $2.3 billion in international sales in 2005. In North America, total sales in 2005 were close to half a billion dollars, which means Gucci sold about $250 million worth of bags in North America.  That's a lot of money, and a lot of bags.

Gucci's Revenues in 2005

The solution to this problem is a little consumer activism. It’s one thing not to buy a product, but we also need to tell the company what we’re doing. Here is a list of PR Contacts for Gucci. If BoycottTheBag.com inspires you, let them know what you are (or aren’t!) doing.