The height of luxury gets lower

There was a time when Ashley Cofone didn't wince at the price tags on dresses by designers Doo-Ri Chung or Behnaz Sarafpour. Maybe she'd wear the piece once, possibly twice. If the 33-year-old Penn Valley mom saw style potential, she purchased.

Then the recession hit.

This spring, Cofone, an executive with Govberg jewelers and the fiancée of store owner Danny Govberg, bought a few high-end pieces, but she didn't shop nearly as much. And, she said, these days it takes more than a label and a lot of zeros to validate fashion extravagance.

"I really made sure my purchases were more versatile this year," said Cofone, who shops at Boyds and Elizabeth Maar boutique in Newtown Square. "For example, the little black Dolce dress I bought has multiple uses, and it's really unique."

During the last decade of conspicuous consumption, all it took was an exorbitant price tag and an "it" label - think $25,000 Birkin bags and Juicy Couture sweats - for an item to be considered luxury.

But as everyone tries to survive these frightening financial times - decreased personal wealth and steep job losses - luxury shoppers, manufacturers, and retailers are rethinking what defines the epitome of high fashion. Slowly, luxury is returning to its original form, with uniqueness and practicality more of a focus than astronomically high prices.

Thanks in part to first lady Michelle Obama's penchant for repetition (you may recall seeing her studded belt more than once), high society is learning how to mix high-cost pieces with low. Less has truly become more. Labels are tacky and price points have dropped.

"People were buying well beyond their means and consumers were trading up to luxury," said Marshal Cohen, an analyst for the NPD Group, a market research firm. "But now the bubble has burst and luxury brands have to come down to their level. . . . The party is over. Luxury has to earn its stripes again."

The proof is in luxury department store earnings.

Saks Fifth Avenue reported that its May same-store sales plunged 26.6 percent from the previous year, after analysts had predicted just a 14.5 percent drop. Numbers for Neiman Marcus - the parent company of both Neiman and Bergdorf Goodman - showed a 27 percent drop in May compared with a year ago.

After a Barney's Co-op opened on Rittenhouse Square two months ago, much of the store's merchandise was marked down within two weeks - a practice unheard of in the heyday of higher-than-high price points.