Discover how this Croatian fashion label is playing with supply and demand

Beyond the design and size of your garment, it’s often the price tag that sparks the most controversy and intrigue. What exactly you’re paying more for is never explicit: sometimes it’s better materials, meticulous craft, or ethical labour; other times, the high cost could simply be a matter of hype. Croatian unisex label PRICE ON REQUEST are taking price transparency to a whole new level.

“When we started, [we faced] a question familiar to any new designer: how do you price a collection and cover the costs, if your brand value does not exist? Especially here in Croatia, where most of the population can only afford high street prices,” says Gala Marija Vrbanić, the founder of PRICE ON REQUEST. “So we came up with an idea: the price of a garment increases with every item sold. For example, when we first present a shirt, that shirt might cost $30. It’s a low price, one that leaves us with hardly any room for profit. But that same shirt will cost $42 for the next customer, for the third customer it will get even higher, and so on. In that way, we are welcoming early buyers. With time our brand value also rises. I think this is a natural progression in each brand’s development. We’ve decided to demystify the process and involve the customers at every step.”

“After my first show at Croatian Fashion Week, I was really frustrated,” Vrbanić recalls. “To be precise, the quality of your work is judged by the number of celebrities taking selfies in the front row of your show. It doesn’t matter whether you have a unique concept or have copied a D&G collection from 2013.”

With an ambition to tell the truth about the state of fashion in Zagreb, Vrbanić gathered a group of like-minded individuals who became the collective behind PRICE ON REQUEST. “We decided that we are not going to be negative, but instead do something which speaks to people in a fresh way. But at the same time, we always try to be critical and hopefully influence the public,” she says.

In the last few years, a lot of emerging designers have become vocal about fashion’s overproduction problem, trying to find creative solutions through their collections. Fashion designers from the New East are among those pioneering the movement: from Tigran Avetisyan presenting a collection of 12 identical coats emblazoned with “Nothing Changes”, to Jahnkoy’s Maria Kazakova using her designs to talk about the disastrous environmental effect clothing donation has on traditional crafts in Africa. Then there’s the Vetements label, founded by Demna Gvasalia, which has been holding a mirror to the fashion industry by offering “ugly” normcore at luxury prices.

Capitalism came to post-communist countries as late as the 1990s, meaning a lot of New East designers have arrived on the market just as the industry is facing systemic issues such as the crisis of textile manufacturing. At the same time, they have witnessed a hot new market for luxury brands. Their collections confront this contradiction between consciousness and overconsumption head-on.

Retaining a critical stance is more important for Vrbanić than pushing a brand aesthetic. “I think that all this post-Soviet hype that comes from Western media and local designers is not reflective of what’s happening in the region. It a sentimental illusion from 20 years ago. A lot of the people are doing it only because it’s trending,” she says.