The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
ISTANBUL, Turkey — As everyone knows, there are two sides to every trade. With more than 80 million Turks substantially poorer following a plunge in their currency, the winners were foreigners behind the velvet ropes at Istanbul's Istinye Park Mall.
They were lining up to splurge at some of the world's priciest retailers — Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermès among them — at the ritzy open-air shopping complex under clear blue skies. All of a sudden, the wares on offer had gotten a whole lot cheaper for the lucky few with foreign currency to spend.
"Turkey is now the cheapest place in the world for shopping,” said Orhan, 22, who was holding a place in the line outside Louis Vuitton for a Chinese couple shopping elsewhere, and who didn’t want to give his last name.
Down the street at Chanel, the prize for a half-hour wait outside closed glass doors might have been a “Classic Chanel Camera Case Bag”: At 18,500 liras, the leather bag was selling for the equivalent of $2,877, an almost 25 percent discount to the $3,700 it costs on a European Chanel online site.
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Inside the shops, customers were asking prices, with their iPhones at hand to convert them into euros and dollars at the latest rate. It’s been hard to keep up: in the past three weeks, the lira has lost 27 percent against the dollar — 21 percent of that in the last week alone.
Virtually all those queuing up outside were Arab and Asian visitors, with a smattering of Europeans. Turkish buyers were nowhere in sight.
“We earn dollars and buy things in Turkish lira," said Carson, 35, a Chinese native who works in telecommunications in Istanbul. He declined to give his full name while chatting with a reporter outside Louis Vuitton. "For companies in the long run it’s not good, for the local people it’s not good. They suffer from the currency."
But there was a silver lining, maybe.
“Normally people buy something for their friends as well,” he said.
By Constantine Courcoulas; editors: James Hertling and Benjamin Harvey.
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