The amount of noise The Row’s annual sample sale generated last weekend was perhaps antithetical to the brand’s ultimate quiet luxury status. But what else could be expected? The brand’s legions of fans swarmed for the chance to purchase coveted pieces at 75% off, some partaking in eight-hour queues.
After scoring deals, they posted about them, mostly on TikTok. They came with receipts: one TikToker got a $3,000 blazer for $750. Another paid $487.50 for a cashmere sweater that was originally $1,950. A $13,500 coat was down to $3,375. Some commenters lamented not being in the city; many more marvelled at the high prices for pieces like simple black sweaters. Content creators jumped in, with parodies of the multi-thousand-dollar hauls.
Traditionally, sample sales are how brands clear excess inventory in a (relatively) controlled environment, without letting it sit in warehouses or selling it to off-price retailers. Other crowd-drawing sample sales of late include Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, Marc Jacobs and Isabel Marant, though they didn’t generate the same discourse The Row did. Brands weren’t always into the concept, says Jay Saba, who founded Privé, the third-party sample sale company that hosted The Row, back in 2002. Brands preferred to let inventory pile up than sell it off and dilute their status, he recalls. This changed in 2008 when brands, pressured by the financial crisis, fast came around to the strategy.
For more than a decade, sample sales were insulated in fashion cities like New York. Today, particularly post-Covid, they’re social media fuel as much as they are sales events, with TikTok being the key platform, says Lila Delilah, the journalist-turned-blogger behind “Madison Avenue Spy”, where she has tracked and covered luxury sample sales for 15-plus years.
“This is the New York City version of Alabama rush,” Delilah says. “I know nothing about Southern schools and rush sorority life, but I am captured every year by it. Unless you’re a New Yorker that’s very plugged into the fashion world, you don’t know about these sample sales. But now, people in Alabama are watching these unboxings from The Row and nobody gets it — but you can’t pull away.”
