Right? According to my email inbox, Gap, Banana, etc are perpetually 40% off. Why do they even bother?

“shoppers’ fixation on promotional prices” I see so many brands blaming customers for this! Don’t set your prices so high and then have 30% off all the time if you don’t want us to get used to it.

Case in point:

It's probably that while the prices have risen, the quality has dropped considerably. I have a few older J.Crew items and they were made beautifully. The new stuff? Boxy, thinner materials, and a lot of unflattering styles.

I have started buying my generic basics from Lands' End, which is more expensive than it used to be, but still great quality, and greatly improved styling.

Cachet.

This smells of bullshit to me. If the company is losing money, it would be very difficult to directly attribute it to Jenna Lyons being overly self-promotional. If the CEO did actually say this about her, it sounds like some major blame deflecting.

For real. The prices are also going up and up but the quality isn't. And that's the biggest problem. I have no problem plunking down some cash for something that I can wear for a long time, but J.Crew clothing doesn't stand up as much as used to.

Don't get me wrong, I love the new JCrew. But, maybe it's the ever increasing (seemingly doubling) price points that are the revenue problem? That with a significant cutback in basic basics (or they sell out too fast) and you're losing core customers. Interesting and stylish is good and fun, but basics bring you…

Sewing can be fun but not worth it anymore, economically speaking. Mommy was a professional seamstress, and was I well dressed in the high school years! She gave up sewing "daily" clothes in the early 90's, because she couldn't make items for the price she could buy them. Her "nice" clothes, she still made. Still…

Oh man, I miss that place so much. In college I worked at one of the makeup counters at Filene's, and every single break, I could be found downstairs, stalking the 75% automatics markdowns. I was as well dressed as a semi-broke college student could ever hope to be.

I just said the same thing up thread. I used to regularly shop at J.Crew. Loved the style and quality. Now, too expensive and poor quality.

You also want to wash your clothes in lingerie bags, the ones from Bare Necessities are the ones I like best, because they don't crowd larger items like sweaters or slacks.

I did mean that one, yes—Downtown Crossing. It was the best. Yesterday, I would have said that it is the best. I moved from Boston eight or nine years ago and didn't know it was gone.

You mean the real one in Boston? I used to work nearby and I swear, I went everyday, it was the best. I was so sad to see it go.

I have had people argue with me about this when I tried to tell them.

When outlet stores first existed, they were absolutely filled with factory rejects/unsold merchandise.

I used to work at Kate Spade and people's head would explode when I told them that most merchandise in the outlet was never in the full price stores to begin with. So many people would scoff at prices and snarkily say "Why would I pay full price for this? I'll just wait til it goes to the outlet!" but be so upset…