Letter from New York: Dudes, designer clothes, and the downturn

If clothing is more an investment than extravagance for guys, a designer consignment store like INA Men in New York is the proof of ROI. There are the store’s consigners, who turn a profit when they divest themselves of designer samples, wrong sizes, or last-season styles. Then, there are the customers, who like their fashion high but the prices low.

There’s certainly nothing novel about shopping secondhand, especially amid a recession. But a thrift store stocked full with designer pieces and men’s-only? Clothes shopping may have been the bane of a guy’s existence in the past but maybe more men are acquiring the patience—or even a penchant—for it.

“When we first opened, it was a lot of men in the industry,” store manager Bajun Riddick says of consigners composed mostly of Gucci Group employees who needed to free up office space or older gay men who’d retired from retail. Though a significant portion of the store’s consignments still come from editors or the fashion workforce, “a year or two after the economic crash is when I started really seeing the average man get into fashion,” says Riddick. 

“It used to be once you cultivated your look as a man and you’re mid-to-late-20’s, you’re pretty much done,” explains Riddick. “Now, men are shedding an older look and developing something new—or maybe they got a better job and need to wear a suit every day.” 

When Ina Berstein, a hoarder of haute couture, put up the first INA consignment store in New York in 1993, the men’s section consisted of a rack of suits and jeans. Riddick attributes the need for a sole men’s store to the “metrosexual” movement in the early 2000s. However, when the first INA Men boutique—a 500 square-foot space with one fitting room—was put up three years ago, it couldn’t accommodate the surge of consigners and customers.

“The men’s store was just still too small so we moved here two and a half years ago,” says Riddick of the main men’s store on style district Soho’s Prince Street, where racks of suit jackets on sale divide a room duly organized by clothing item. Collectibles at the front—Italian leather jackets, Made-in-New York Thom Browne, and a Gucci shearling hung prominently by a floor-to-ceiling mirror—and coats, shirts, shoes and trousers arranged neatly in rows. Apart from bags and other accessories also having their own shelves, there are two spacious dressing rooms now.

First-rate finds, secondhand buys: With fashion editors and upmarket retailers as consigners, customers get in on an exclusive selection that isn’t priced exorbitantly. $85 YSL khakis, anyone?

The store’s expansion in mid-2009 is testament to men’s rising fervor for fashion. “I guess in a traditional business model, you’re not expected to expand when there’s an economic downturn like that but we had no choice,” says Riddick, who handles an average of 10 consigners a day, some frequently bringing hundreds of pieces they want to sell.

Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that men’s apparel sales rose 6.5 % through September to $53.7 billion. The rise, the report indicated, is attributed to the 10.8% growth in tailored clothing and 2.3% growth in shirting. In a report in January by thehighlow.com, LVMH’s Antoine Arnault says the company’s success is “due to male customers who are spending more on inconspicuous luxury wear.”

More so if the same luxury wear is a third of the retail price. Button downs in the store go for a standard 70 to 80 dollars, Riddick explains. “Where pricing gets weird,” he says, “is with certain designers who have collectible pieces.” “There are certain leather jackets from Rick Owens from two and three seasons ago that I can still sell in this store for about 30-40 off of what they cost originally in the store. Hedi Slimane leathers and denim from when he was still at Dior still fetch a pretty penny but not as much as they would have three years ago when all the fanboys really wanted Dior.” Of course, the pricing, apart from markdowns and twice-a-year 70-off sales, is why INA Men gets packed daily by after-work shoppers. 

Wilson Chmielinsky, a 23-year-old artist, discovered the store five years ago, while searching for the sort of designer consignment stores he saw on a trip to Paris. Though prices are a tad steeper than resale places in New York such as Tokio 7 in the East Village, where prices are a fifth of retail, INA Men was the only one curated with just designer menswear. Chmielinsky prides himself in once scoring a $4,000 lamb leather Rick Owens coat—his “holy grail coat”—at INA for $800.

“Seeing the quality of clothing that’s coming in, it seems like people are liquidating their closets to get their money back but also a lot more men are shopping,” says Chmielinsky. “When I walk in, it’s always full of people. It wasn’t like that four years ago. Which is more than I can say if you walk into Jil Sander—there’s rarely anybody there.”