The Shoe That Kicked off a Frenzy

The day after French designer Isabel Marant unveiled her Fall/Winter 2009 collection in Paris in March, the Web sites for boutiques across the U.S. were flooded with emails about studded ankle-high boots, asking when they would be arriving and whether they could be ordered in advance.

Monika Beurmann, a 35-year-old IT consultant from Chicago, says that while looking at the fashion show on Style.com, she "fell in love with the futuristic design of the heel," and
pr e-ordered a pair from Diani, a boutique in Santa Barbara, Calif.

The boots in question, which didn't hit stores until September, are called "Otway," and they can fairly be called the "It" boots of the season. Made of supple suede, the cuffed booties are adorned with rows of circular studs and are held up by a four-inch triangular heel.

Those who are still interested in owning them can forget about it. With the exception of a few pairs on eBay, they are out of stock nearly everywhere, despite a $1,295 price tag.

Mary Blair, a 45-year-old mother of three from Santa Barbara, recently got her boots after being on a wait list for two months. Upon seeing the Otway style in a magazine, "I just thought, 'Oh my god I have to have those.' They kept creeping their way into my brain," she says.

The edgy boots were a departure for Ms. Marant, who is known for her bohemian style. In an email, she said that the inspiration for the Otway came from "this need to…push back a little against the look for my short silk chiffon print dresses."


Benoit Peverelli

Ms. Marant
Curve, a boutique with three locations in New York, Los Angeles and Miami, sold out of the boot within a few days in September. The boutique Diani sold all but two pairs of its stock over the phone before the shoes hit the floor in October and still has a 20-person waiting list. Barneys New York says that aside from one pair in a small size in its L.A. store, it is sold out of the boot in black, but it still has a few left in a camel color. On eBay a used pair is being offered for $1,000, while new ones are selling at full price. Isabel Marant declined to specify how many Otway boots were produced for the U.S. market, but retailers estimate that a few hundred were sold in the U.S.

Although she's considered to be an "emerging" designer, Ms. Marant, 42 years old, isn't a newcomer to the fashion scene. After attending fashion school in Paris and designing accessories for high-fashion brands such as Claude Montana, Ms. Marant started her eponymous brand in 1994 and slowly built a following among stylists, fashion editors and models.

A major part of the brand's allure is its rarity. Until this season, when Isabel Marant accessories were sold at luxury emporium Barneys New York, Ms. Marant's goods could only be found at a handful of small boutiques in the U.S. Because the brand carefully limits orders, products rarely go on sale.

In addition, Ms. Marant forbids retailers to sell her products online, or even post images of them. Revealing prices online is also against the rules. Instead, stores often note on their Web sites that they have Ms. Marant's items in stock and list a phone number where customers can pre-order the goods, sight-unseen.

Chief executive Sophie Duruflé says "our manufacturing decisions are guided by a strong desire to help preserve the French traditional 'savoir faire.'" She adds that the brand "never entered e-commerce since that really wasn't our profession."

That's about to change. This spring, the company will begin selling to the upscale e-commerce site Net-a-Porter.com. Ms. Marant will also open her first U.S. boutique in New York early next year. Such moves are unsettling to small boutiques, which have done brisk business by servicing Ms. Marant's rabid fans.

"We'll see how it goes," says Nadine Ferber, owner of the New York boutique Mick Margo, which has sold Ms. Marant's line for four years. "Maybe we will have to find the next Isabel Marant."

Ms. Marant's success is highly unusual at a grim time for the luxury industry. Sales of luxury goods in the U.S. are expected to fall 16% this year, according to a study by Bain & Co., making the U.S. the world's hardest-hit market for high-end clothing and accessories. Limiting supply has helped Ms. Marant to stoke demand.

"She played her cards in a very cool French way," says Nevena Borissova, owner of Curve, which is Ms. Marant's biggest retail client in the U.S. "She won't supply the demand of America just because we get obsessed with something."

After discovering that the "Forbes" boot—a suede, modified cowboy boot that the designer repeats every season—was out of stock at a local boutique, Marina Mazur, a 50-year-old American who lives in London, called one of Ms. Marant's boutiques in Paris to see if she could place an order. "They said, 'Oh, we don't ship outside of Paris. If you want the boots, you have to come and get them,'" she says.

Enterprising individuals have made a killing selling Ms. Marant's designs on eBay. In December, Sarah Dwyer of Minneapolis sold a plain pair of brown Isabel Marant ankle boots for $405, more than four times their offered price on eBay, after receiving 27 bids.

The Isabel Marant frenzy can be traced to another boot that the designer put on the runway two seasons ago, Ms. Borissova says. The "Soono" boot was a slouchy suede knee-high boot covered in chains. Celebrities like Rihanna, Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez ordered it at Curve before the shoes even arrived.

Ms. Borissova, who ordered 28 pairs of the Soono, says that the company only delivered three pairs. She flew to Paris to plead with the designer to produce more. The brand resisted, but after she committed to a €50,000 (about $70,000) order, the company agreed to recreate the $1,300 boot.

For now, retailers are bracing themselves for next season's hot boot, the "Dana," a fringed style in several different colors, including a camouflage print.

Jennifer Mankins, owner of the Brooklyn boutique Bird, missed out on the Otway boot because she thought the style was too outré for her customers. But she's ordering the new fringed boot in several colors and heights for spring.

Because Ms. Marant's fan base has grown considerably, she says, "it gives me confidence that I can buy something a little out there and there will be enough people willing to spend money on it." (Wall Street Journal)

It's certainly one of my favorites!