When Is Luxury Not Luxury?

When Lilly Pulitzer released an exclusive line for Target in April, the entire collection sold out at some physical locations within hours. Good for the designer, good for the store, good for the buyers. A resultant Target website crash aside, good for everybody…right?

“No target shouldn’t collaborate with Lilly just no ew ew ew keep Lilly Pulitzer classy people” – Katherine (@kathhlambert)

“lilly pulitzer collaborating with target is probably the worst news I will get in all of 2015” – Marisa Lyn Friedman (@marisalynnnn)

“Lilly pulitzer for target?! Holy hell What’s next?! the apocalypse??! affordable clothing for the masses!? Disgusting” – Pamela Beesly (@trillprincess47)

Those tweets (the third of which, c’mon, has to at least be partially sarcastic) went out not after “Lilly Pulitzer for Target” was released, but actually when the line was first announced, back in January.

The perception among Lilly Pulitzer devotees outspoken in their disapproval of the Target collaboration, then and now, seems to be that the value of Lilly Pulitzer clothing (and other items) is directly related to their cost. And if the cost goes down (Lilly Pulitzer dresses, which often sell for $200, were available at Target for $40), the brand itself diminishes in value.

It wasn’t only semi-anonymous Twitter users who expressed their disdain for Lilly Pulitzer’s availability to bargain shoppers. In an op-ed for Bloomberg, columnist Megan McArdle – having expressed her belief that Lilly Pulitzer clothes are in fact quite ugly and worn only as a statement by people too rich to care – wrote that “actually wearing Target’s Lilly Pulitzer line…signals the exact opposite of what it is supposed to.” That is to say, if you had to make an effort to buy those clothes, you don’t really deserve to wear them.

Crossovers between high-end brands and mass-market retailers – and the potential image risk to the former – are by no means a new phenomenon. In 1983, the designer brand Halston released a collection exclusive to J.C. Penney, and lost some luxury partnerships as a result.

Halston’s experience aside, the particular backlash to the Lilly Pulitzer/Target collaboration seems a bit out of step with the norm, as Target’s own partnerships with brands like Isaac Mizrahi and, as recently as this year, Missoni, or the recently-announced deal between H&M and Balmain, did not raise such a volume of ire among self-appointed consumer protectors of the luxury ideal.

While there is a risk of brand dilution in partnerships, a study from the Luxury Institute (which, you have to figure, knows a thing or two about this topic) showed that affluent shoppers are not turned off by luxury brands partnering with mainstream brands.

With specific regard to the Lilly Pulitzer/Target hookup, the Harvard Business Review crunched the numbers and viewed the outcome as purely positive.

“Unlike the market saturation and brand extension strategies that have de-valued other luxury brands like Michael Kors and Coach,” states the HBR’s report, “the Target collaboration was a smart move for Lilly Pulitzer. The limited-item, limited time collection allowed the company to expand the brand while maintaining its exclusive appeal.”

Given the success of the arrangement on almost every count (save, again, that unfortunate website overload), it is more than likely that more collaborations between high-end brands and mainstream retailers are on the horizon. Will there be outcries from those who, holding luxury in high regard, look down their noses at mass-market consumers? It’s likely. But it’s just as likely that such complaints won’t have much an impact on the bottom line.

After all, haters gonna hate.

Or, as Lisa Birnbach put it more eloquently in New York Magazine, Lilly Pulitzer herself “would not have approved of her ‘defenders.’” Referencing the Alexander Theroux quote, “Hypocrisy is the essence of snobbery, but all snobbery is about the problem of belonging,” she concludes that “Pulitzer, despite her last name, was no snob.”

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