Charles Worth Dresses

[interele]

What would a dress made by Worth cost in todays money

Ta

M

[Tilly2]

worth......a fortune?

[Graham-W]

If you can find out what he charged in, say 1880, then put it through this calculator: http://safalra.com/other/historical-uk-inflation-price-conversion/

eg £100 in 1880 equates to £10,000 in 2012.

[dotty.]

Do you mean if empress josephine was buying her frock today what would she pay? probably nowt, it's the kudos innit

[interele]

I haven't found a definitive price for a dress - but apparently Worth was earning £80000
a year which if you feed into that inflation calculation ( many thanks for the link ) was
about £18 million in todays money... nice money for designing frocks :-)

[jake-the-peg]

Not much by the standards of todays top players they reckon Karl Largerfeld is worth $125 million

Worth was operating in a time where his fame was only relatively limited - he did not have the capacity to make mass produced versions in the far east, and sell in designer outlets or to produce perfumes at a 95% profit margin.

Today he'd be well up on that

[Mosaic]

In Worth's day the pay of skilled tailors / seamstresses was very low, and rates of mechanised production also low ie much of the work would involve hand-stitching. Nowadays anything made in this way is much more expensive in comparative terms because if produced in the west, even rock-bottom wages are much higher than they were back then. So it isn't a straightforward question to answer.

[atalanta]

make mine a Fortuny.