Are you one of the people who buy dresses for £200 +

[listsandbudgets]

Who are these people?

I need a dress for an important occasion and as I had nothing suitable to wear I went hunting through charity shops. After a couple of hours and a lot of shops, I admitted defeat and headed for the proper shops. I budgeted a maximum of £100 which I hoped was generous.. Almost nothing that was suitable, my size and I liked seemed to be less than £125 A lot of them were £200 plus.

I finally fell in love with a £199 dress thankfully reduced to £79. The lovely sales assistant told me that it was the last one of that line and hadn't sold as it was an unusual size (20 ). The rest had gone at the full price.

So are you one of those people and do you really feel the dresses are worth what you paid? Perhaps I'm just tight with money and need to accept taht this is the price of a nice dress now.

Wow, this thread turned into a stealth boast special pretty quickly....

I buy really expensive things - on EBay for £20.

Last year I bought a Boden dress (silk jersey), was £139 originally - got it for £13 brand new

I would love to spend that amount on clothes. I love clothes but I have a Primark budget and they need to last too.

I couldn't spend £200 on a dress, there isn't enough in the budget sadly.

Yes I am one of those people and yes I do feel they're worth it if I love them and feel great in them..

Equally I have plenty of £50 dresses I love....

If I love it and if I can afford it then I will buy it.

Yes absolutely. I loathe and detest shopping so if I find something classic that looks amazing I will pay up and keep it for years. I don't worry about recycling things though if they look good who cares is my motto. So probably cheaper overall than 4 cheap dresses.

Noooo....even for weddings I feel pretty fancy buying something half that!

BUT I have to admit that if I worked in a corporate office where 100% of my clothes had to be little black dresses and smart glossy shoes then I probably would. Cos I'd get a great cost-per-wear ratio, and the material does tend to hang better with expensive work dresses.

I think it really depends on your lifestyle. I wear a uniform at work and jeans, a top and ankle boots otherwise, and I'm not spending £200+ on a pair of jeans.

I have to say my fantasy purchase is a pair of Isabel Marant Dicker boots. I would get an amaaaaazing cost-per-wear out of them! But I can't even afford the TopShop knock-offs at the moment.

If i could afford it I would buy a small amount of really expensive, very high quality clothes. I would then wear them all the time, for years and years so I didn't have to do any more bloody clothes shopping! The problem with cheap clothes is that that always need replacing really quickly and I so hate shopping.

I would never spend lots on something I would only wear occasionally though. I wear every dress I own at least once a week.

If I can afford to I do. If not, I don't.

I bought a dress £250 for a wedding when I was 8 months pregnant. I needed to look & feel good.

I got a new designer dress reduced to £30 for a wedding a few years ago & felt amazing in it! I doubt it will ever fit me again :(

My mum is the kind to soend 200 on a dress. Luckily for me we wear the same size so if I have a function to go to I'll rifle through her dresses and "borrow" one and probably never return it

I do but not often. I have three dresses that were £200+ and one good dress coat (£350) and they're the outfits I rotate for all occasions (weddings etc.) I think that with that sort of price tag (usually) you get the sort of quality and simplicity that is very versatile, you don't always get that with cheaper dresses. I also have some cheaper dresses for less fancy occasions (ie christmas parties that are likely to end up in a club, that sort of things).

Depends on the occasion and how finances are at the time.

I'm also happy to have a wardrobe of mixed clothes and also shop in primark/h&m

I have a Vivienne Westwood dress that cost almost £1,000 and it was worth every penny. I bought an Edina Ronay dress for work last week which was £360. I have several Edina Ronay summer dresses in that price range and half a dozen Samantha Sung dresses for work which were in the £300-£400 range.

They are beautifully made, elegant, very flattering and make me feel good.

I have 2 Vivienne Westwood dresses, one from TK Maxx for £79 from £400+ and another half price at£99. I'd spend ££ on another one as they are so flattering and wearable.

Oh and several little black Paddy Campbell dresses which cost hundreds and which I've had for years.

I sometimes do if I think it's well made and worth it.

The outfits I've had for years and wear over and over are the ones I paid more for.

I do buy tat from H&M and New Look but it does all fall apart and get out of shape in less than a year.

Fainting dead away at the thought of spending £1000 on a dress. I bet its beautiful though Phaedra

I have a beautiful coast dress I paid £250, worn once it sits all pretty and wrapped up in a box along with all the other clothes I'm too fat for!

Once I can fit back into it I will wear it just to pop to the shops if I have too just so get money worth out of it as certainly couldn't pay that much for item on myself again.

I usually spend between £80-120 on dresses. It's all I wear. I wear them with leggings/tights/jeans. I never buy cheap stuff (except leggings which come from supermarkets usually). The dresses all wash well and last years and most can be worn summer or winter. I wouldn't spend a fortune on something I'd only wear once though (exception being wedding dress). I also love TKMaxx - especially for cashmere jumpers!

I would for evening wear. Quality fabric and tailoring are worth paying for imo.

Thank you. Not so stealth boast but I bought it for a wedding and a guest told me that after the bride's mine was the nicest dress there. The bride's cost £4,000.

I've had a lot more wear out of my dress.!

No, never spend £200 on a dress, can't promise tho' if I saw a perfect one I wouldn't!

I have never spent that on a dress, but if someone can afford it I don't think it is silly. I do have one dress though that was actually about £40 but would have been a bargain at £400 because I have worn it so much, for about 10 years. It is finally starting to give up the ghost which is sad, but the value per wear has been so good I must be making a profit on it . I've got items that were £20-£45 that I've never worn or worn once; a more expensive dress I wore a lot would have been better value.

I spent years in cheap clothes never have anything to wear.

As I've got older I moved to buying fewer, better quality clothes. I only but something I really love and that really suits me. I also try to make sure that if I buy something I will get a lot of wear out of it. So yes I'd buy a £200 dress but, no I'd never only wear it once.

I have three work suits, all of which cost over £500 each. The pieces all mix and match so rather than 3 suits I have at least 9 different ways of styling them. They are worn at least once a week, approximately 49 weeks of the year. They still look really good and I've had them for at least two years. So yes £500 for a suit is a lot of money but they've all been worn about 100 times and are still going strong.

That being said, I keep a careful eye on sales in my favourite shops and on eBay too so for example about half my Reiss pieces come from the shop and half from eBay. It doesn't have to be all of one and none if the other.

It's an interesting exercise to keep a log book of what you spend in clothes in a year, I'd bet that a good number of the 'never more than £50' shoppers spend more than the capsule wardrobe types.

I would. If I had a budget that meant I could afford that, and if I thought the quality of the dress was worth £200.

For £200 I would expect quality fabric, lining, good stitching. Basically an investment piece!

If you take a few minutes to consider how long it takes to make a quality garment, with nice fabric, good strong seams and hems etc, then you start to realise quite quickly how a wedding dress can cost £1000+ (though obviously wedding dress prices are hiked up )

You can buy some poorly made dresses for £200, so may as well spend £50, but alternatively, if you shop wisely you could have a dress that you wear every week, that you look amazing in.

Also, quality fabric drapes better, breathes more than polyester, and is often more flattering.