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Isable Marant’s ‘Otway’ boots retail for $1,295 (Getty Images)

Rachel Dodes wrote an article in the WSJ about Isable Marant’s ‘Otway’ boots and the craze it has created since the designer’s runway show last March.  Apparently the French  designer has  perfected the art of ”playing hard to get”.  The boots retail for about $1,295 but they’re impossible to find anymore.  The Parisian designer sells to only a handful of US boutiques, most of which sold out of the boots within days of its September release.  Shoppers were on wait lists for months since only a few hundred pairs were ordered for the US market.  Ms Marant and her marketing team guard the brand’s exclusivity with the secrecy of the CIA.  Boutiques that carry Ms Marant’s merchandise are prohibited from selling on-line or even posting photos of the items!  Instead they post a phone number where you can call and pre-order Ms Marant’s creations site-unseen. 

 Things will be changing this Spring though, Ms Marant will be finally selling on-line through Net-A-Porter.com.  It may be do to the slump in luxury goods sales that she has realized that women would like to actually see what their getting for $1,300!!! The ‘Otway’ boots are fabulous but in all fairness you can now get similar looking boots for much less (http://www.shoeseen.com/rags-to-riches.html).  

There are over 100 million women in the US so of course there’s going to be great demand for a pair of shoes if you allow only 300-400 pairs to be sold here.  So although it might seem that thousands of women are going crazy over Ms Marant’s boots it might just be that she only has 300-400 fans who are willing to buy her expensive footwear under ridiculous conditions.  If you’re one of these fans you might still find a pair or two on eBay selling at full price and Barneys still has some in a camel color.