Last September, while reading our very good Secret Strategist newsletter (subscribe here if you haven’t already), I clicked on a link to a men’s pink overshirt from A.P.C. that led to Cettire, an Australia-based fashion e-commerce site I’d never visited before. The shirt, which I thought my husband would like, was on sale for $134, 50 percent off the original list price. Intrigued, I started clicking around and stumbled across a trove of current-season Miu Miu — my absolute favorite design house — all of which was also marked down.
Amid the viral ballet flats and ultra-mini skirts, one item stood out: the (admittedly more masculine) double monk-strap brogues from Miu Miu’s collaboration with Church’s, the British heritage shoe brand. A week before, I stopped by Miu Miu’s Soho location — “just to see” — and tried on the last pair in black. I wanted the brown ones that Chloë Sevigny models here, but those were already gone. Retailing at $1,350, they were obviously too expensive anyway. I also tried on those satin ballet flats (retail price: $975) and concluded that they were, indeed, perfect, if completely impractical.
Sold out everywhere else, there they were at Cettire, on sale for $942. The site was running an additional 10 perent off promotion, bringing the price down to $850. Seeing the very Miu Mius I wanted for $500 less than retail made my heart race, like I uncovered some great secret. I started to come up with all sorts of justifications for why I needed them. I concluded that they would be a combination birthday-Christmas present to myself and the only designer item I would buy that year. (I have kept that promise — so far.) I clicked “purchase,” along with the A.P.C. shirt for my husband ($121 after the extra promo). Shipping was free, but taxes and duties came out to about $170. To my great surprise and delight, the shoes arrived from Italy the very next day, in under 30 hours. The shirt followed a couple of days after that. (The brogues are even cheaper now at $793, but the price changes depending on size.)
My husband then decided to buy a couple of things, too, including a pair of A.P.C. Petit Standard jeans for $94 (retail price: $270) and a pair of loafers that ended up being too big. When he logged into his account to return the shoes, he saw that he could either get a full refund on them or get store credit — plus 15 percent extra. We were both baffled by this offer but decided to try it as an experiment. (Not surprisingly, I didn’t see this advertised in its returns policy.) He paid $25 for the overseas return, and two weeks plus a bunch of emails to customer service later, he received a digital gift card for 115 percent of the value of his returned shoes. With that credit, he bought the same shoes in a smaller size, which was now $50 cheaper, plus a couple of smaller items, including a two-pack of Carhartt WIP T-shirts for $33. Everything shipped separately, and some of his stuff got stuck in customs. It was a bit of a headache, but all of it arrived eventually.
Before we gave our credit-card numbers over to a site that seemed too good to be true, we did a little due diligence. Online reviews were generally positive, with people marveling at some of the discounts they scored, but there were still a lot of unhappy customers who complained about poor — sometimes terrible — customer service and slow returns processing. We took the gamble anyway. In terms of the site’s legitimacy and how it’s able to offer authentic, in-season designer goods at steep discounts, I’d assumed that Cettire, as an Australian site, was using the designer’s country-of-origin price as the starting point as opposed to the U.S.-retail price. For example, everyone knows that a Louis Vuitton purse will cost less in France than it does here. Take this Miu Miu jacket. In Europe, it costs €3,350. If we’re looking at a direct exchange-rate price, it would cost around $3,630, but instead, it retails in the U.S. for $4,900. At Cettire, it’s $3,568 discounted to $2,317 (now sold-out). I don’t know how Cettire landed at that final price, but it’s basically half of what it costs here.
I also figured that Cettire uses drop-shipping and doesn’t keep any inventory itself (as Ssense does), as every item we ordered came separately and from different warehouses. Turns out, it’s a combination of both. Cettire, like U.S.-based Italist, which Laura Reilly recently called an “open secret” in Magasin, is part of the luxury “gray market.” Sites like Cettire and Italist, which are completely legal and legitimate, source their designer products from boutiques in Europe, taking advantage of loopholes in import-export taxation regulations to bring customers better discounts than usual. While the items are authentic, these platforms don’t usually have any relationship with the brands themselves, which lands them in that gray zone.
I’m not the only one who’s taken advantage of Cettire’s competitive prices. Strategist writer Dominique Pariso was “desperately coveting” this gold Comme des Garçons wallet (retail price: $240) for Christmas and found it at Cettire for $170. She ended up sending the link to her brother, who got it for her. “He ordered it on the 20th and it was at my parents’ house in time to get wrapped and go under the tree for Christmas morning,” she told me.
Strategist writer Ambar Pardilla also uncovered a big discount on a pair of Gucci glasses. Originally retailing for $520, she found them at Cettire for a little over $200 at the time. “They were the only place that had them for that price,” she said. Another time, she bought an Alexander McQueen ring for around $100 when it normally goes for $400. While I’ll head to Cettire to “window-shop” new-season stuff, Pardilla goes for the things that got away: “It’s like the equivalent of going to Woodbury Commons — you’ll see some things that you swore were gone gone.” She admits, however, that Cettire doesn’t have the best user interface, and I agree. You really have to dig and click through each page to find what you’re looking for.
I haven’t bought anything from Cettire since the fall, but I do check in from time to time. I’ve got my eye on this (ridiculous) sheer, embellished Miu Miu cardigan, but it hasn’t popped up yet. Maybe one day. I will confess, though, that my Miu Miu brogues are slightly too large, but I kept them anyway, wary of dealing with the returns process. I still wear them, slightly slipping off my heels, perhaps as a reminder that the joke is on me for having paid so much money for designer shoes that don’t even fit properly. But I love them.
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