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Anyone else noticed this retail trend?

Sales of mens fashion outpaced womens in France for the first time last year and retailers here are pulling out all the stops to ensure that trend continues, despite a precarious economic climate.

Department stores and niche boutiques from Galeries Lafayette and Printemps to LEclaireur are upping their style quotient, increasing their accessory and luxury brand offerings, remodeling their stores and sprucing up their private label lines to draw in Parisian men, who are primping, shopping for pleasure and bolstering their wardrobes with high-end labels like never before.

well if you ask me... haha

Yeah actually I have noticed it with all the different fashion niches that are around.

Street wear (sneaker freaker/supreme/vis vim) types have now moved on to the luxury market - especially with all the collaborations that have been happening. More so than mainstream and high fashion collaborations combined! There is one happening literally every week. You know you've made it if you got a "X" next to your label. e.g. Levis X Colt, Number Nine X Visvim etc... they've cultivated a hype phenomenon with feeding people all this "exclusive/limited eddition/buy now-if you don't you're a loser" mentality. Really funny actually

Even with the high fashion/luxury market in melbourne i've seen people go crazy. David Jones always seems to be busy - also I went into Left a few weeks ago and they had a fair few customers testing out their Comme range which is a lot to say becuase its a VERY small store. Most places seem to be doing a normal trade but then again I don't sit outside stores and count people. Well maybe on fridays but thats none of your business. lol jks

Also I've noticed with my friends, its a very big trend to save bucket loads all throughout the year and go insane on their summer family vacations. I've seen the booty from Hong Kong, Korean, Japan and even Vietnam. And I'm telling ya it's actually "normal" for a 16-17 yr old boy to spend an average of 2-3000 AUD in a matter of days.

But even now they're still going. No S**t a freind of mine spent $5000 in two weeks (which included an Anne Demeulemeester pencil box $50 ebay) and hoped his mum wouldn't notice it on her pay pal account because she bought a couple of Chanel bags. Well she did, and now he's kissing bye bye to his mid-year shopping trip to Japan. haha! silly boy

I've even noticed diabro.net has increased its menswear collection

And then I guess there's the Chapel st Crowd M < ====hahaha I'm kidding.

I'm certainly seeing it. Knowing the figures that a lot of the Collins Street stores do, leaving the accessory companies aside (Louis Vuitton for instance), they're all seeing a major growth in men's sales. Where a retailer is stocking men's and women's, the sales difference are up to 70% men's for some of the stores.