Say goodbye to eLuxury

eLuxury, the eight-year-old website this Pretty goes to for what I call "monitor-shopping" will soon be shutting down its retail portion. While this affects my life not at all - who can afford those clothes with this sucky economy? - it's just another sign of how the recession is hitting the fashion world hard.

But according to eLuxury's parent company LVMH, the economy isn't the reason it's stopping the site's retail portion. Rather, they say that the operation is closing because many of the brands it sells has their own online retail presence. Likely story. WWD reports that sources say eLuxury has shown consistent sales growth overall — experiencing double-digit increases from 2007 to 2008. But nonetheless we wonder if these "sources" are really LVMH workers desperately trying to hold on to investment dollars.

In the meantime, instead of a seller of luxury goods, eLuxury will tranform in mid-2009 to be simply a resource for information about those items no one can afford anymore. Because with times the way they are, there'll be a lot of monitor-shoppers in the years to come.