Author: Katherine Greder

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

This dissertation examines the price determinants and categorical factors that influence the market of historic luxury clothing produced primarily in the 20th and 21st centuries. Assetization, or the process by which a thing becomes a store of capital capable of revenue generation, is transforming luxury industries and secondary markets alike. In this study, clothing is used as a model system to explore the mechanics of assetization as it relates to consumer and luxury goods. Drawing from the field of cultural economics, I examine data collected from the legacy auction house Christie's from 1998 to 2020, and data collected from the digital luxury auction platform 1stDibs.com throughout 2020. The Christie's data includes information from 65 different auctions in which over 4000 objects were analyzed. The 1stDibs.com data includes over 85,000 wearable objects observed for sale on the platform in 2020. The1stdibs.com data includes both the listed price information as well as sold price information. In both cases, listed and sold, the data showed a negative correlation between date of manufacture and price. In general, the older the clothing, the more expensive it was on the contemporary market. The same general trend was observed in the Christie's data where both the estimated values and hammer prices showed a negative correlation between age of the garment and sale price. Since 1998 fashion auctions at Christie's have become increasingly lucrative in both real and nominal terms. Based on data from 1stDibs.com the global distribution of fashion wealth is predominantly found in wealthy regions such as the United States, European countries, and the United Arab Emirates. The findings of this study further underscore the economic significance of the authentication of alternative assets from NFTs to luxury clothing. Moreover, the results of this dissertation confirm the incentivization to buy clothing and hold on to it for longer periods of time. These findings provides a foundation upon which to build further research in cultural economics and secondary markets as a fiscally important area of inquiry for the sustainable movement of consumer goods and the realignment of value chains in the global fashion industry.