Curling up next to the fire with a glass of Malbec, a calculator, and copies of Elle and Vogue, Times fashion writer Eric Wilson delved into the underbelly of "price upon request," that obnoxious line that comes after a designer credit in a fashion glossy, which normally signals that you, a mere mortal, cannot afford the lavish item for which they will not reveal its cost. Except actually, that's completely inaccurate. "Price upon request," while sometimes a designer-requested stand-in for an inflated price, is actually most often used when a magazine simply cannot find out how much the dress, bracelet, or shoes they're featuring actually costs.

How come? Because right after designers unveil their runway collections, magazine editors request those garments to be shot for upcoming issues. Those issues are closed months in advance, well before the designer completes orders with stores on individual garments, and thus, they haven't priced the item yet, which means when the magazine asks for its price, it receives no answer. So the magazine goes ahead and prints "price upon request," and directs readers to call a store (like Barney's or Saks) for the information, after the designer tells the magazine that is where they should expect the garment to be on sale. But what happens when too few stores buy an item? The designer might choose not to even produce it, letting it live and die on the runway. This means the magazine shot and printed that frilly dress, praising it in front of their readers, and the designer never actually made it, which leads to angry readers with maxed out credit cards struggling to buy a garment that doesn't exist.

And this has always been standard in the industry.

You would think Wilson, with his meticulous counting and notation ("price upon request" appeared "104 [times] in the October issue of Elle") would know that. Or that because Wilson is the Times fashion scribe who's been penning away from the newspaper for a handful of years, and before that enjoyed stints at such fashion-y places like Women's Wear Daily.

But rather than acknowledge there is no conspiracy theory here, he plays it up with a Times-brand insta-trend: "It is not surprising, then, that readers have noticed a disconnect between what is promoted in magazines and what appears in stores, and wonder if 'price upon request' is out of control."

Out of control?

Wilson knows the cycle of runway shows to fashion shoots to store buying to actual retail. Instead of explaining why some magazine readers would never be able to buy a garment marked "price upon request," he turned it into a full-fledged scandal. Responsible journalism, everybody!

[Screenshot via Marie Claire]