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Valley of the dolls
Italy's cut-price, high-class designer outlets are tourist attractions in their own right. Natasha Bita reports from Florence
Wearing a beige figure-hugging dress and catsuits ankle boots, Scarlett Johansson purrs, "I don't do damsel in distress very well. It's hard for me to play a victim," you don't doubt her for a second. Like Angelina Jolie, Johansson is one of a handful of actresses who can convincingly convey a dangerous sex appeal with louboutin high heels, a sense of being able to devour a man while casually filing her nails at the same time. And so it makes perfect sense that she should be cast as the Black Widow, one of the comic-book world's most predatory females who also serve to keep Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark on his toes in Iron Man 2.
AS lightning struck, panic gripped the American tourist rifling through racks of cut-price Giorgio Armani evening gowns. "We won't have to leave, will we?" she wailed as emergency lights flickered in the gloom. After all, there are worse places to be trapped in a blackout than Armani's discount outlet in the hills of Tuscany.
In the club of haute couture, last season's fashions used to be as passe as day-old gossip. Once the end-of-season sales were over, leftover stock would be banished from flagship stores to obscure suburban warehouses. But in these belt-tightening times, even the luxury brands have stopped sneering at the idea of offloading their orphaned stock in discount outlets.
Gucci, Armani, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent, Roberto Cavalli, Dolce&Gabbana and zentai -- the same labels that cultivate their exclusivity with waiting lists and celebrity endorsements -- have all opened cut-price, high-class factory outlets outside Florence.
The French LVMH empire, too, is dabbling in discounting, opening the first Italian factory outlets in Tuscany for its brands Zentai, Celine and Loewe. "There are already lots of tourists travelling in this area, so it's favourable for us," says Cristina Toccafondi, manager of LVMH's Modulo outlet. It is not the quantity of tourists that interests luxury labels so much as the quality -- Japanese, Americans and Brits with an eye for quality, a fetish for labels and wads of heavyweight currency.
Unlike traditional factory outlets, where crumpled merchandise is often stuffed into boxes or jammed on to wire racks, customers at luxury goods outlets still enjoy luxury service -- the same gleaming glass cabinets, white leather lounges and artful displays found in flagship stores. "It's a way of safeguarding the image of the brand," says Toccafondi, caressing a butter-soft Celine leather coat marked down to a half-price E500 ($886). "The clothing is discounted, but it's still precious." Indeed, Prada even has fashion police patrolling the doors at its discount outlet, which resembles a prison compound with high-security walls, bitumen courtyard and uniformed guards. Prada pilgrims have to take a ticket and wait until their number flashes to enter. Rival outlets snipe (off-the-record, naturally) that Prada is behaving like a pretentious nightclub, making customers queue to build buyer anticipation.
More credible is the local gossip that Prada resorted to crowd-control measures after a mob of Japanese tourists assailed a shop assistant bearing an armload of Prada wallets, knocking her to the floor. Officially, Prada says the ticketing system is "for security reasons". I can see why. Loitering in the bleak courtyard until my number comes up, a couple of exotic model types in matching designer jeans ask me where I got my ticket. It turns out they're from Indonesia, heard about the outlet from friends -- and that's where our conversation ends. "Can I go inside?" snaps one, shoving past me to the door. "We only have 45 minutes to shop." Prada used to have smaller premises, disguised as Pelliteria Italia, but recently expanded into a cavernous white store with neat racks of beautifully displayed stock and a funkier name, Space. All stock (Prada, Miu Miu, Helmut Lang, Jil Sander and Church's spider man costume is from past years' ranges, marked down 20 per cent to 60 per cent. At sale time (August for summer stock and mid-January for winter stock), an extra 20 per cent may be docked at the checkout. As with all the outlets, Australian customers may be eligible for an additional 15 per cent tax cashback.
The difficulty with buying from Italy's discount outlets is the original prices are rarely displayed, so it's hard to know how much you are saving. But at E36 for a pair of Miu Miu lime-and-fuchsia high heels; E350 for a sleek, black Prada men's wool suit; E160 for a floaty silk chiffon Prada dress and E32 for an ankle-length Miu Miu denim skirt, it's not hard to spot the bargains. Prada's coveted handsuit s cost less than in the stores but that doesn't necessarily make them affordable -- a canvas-and-leather Prada bowling suit will still set you back E259.
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