Luxury goods were once made to last, but not anymore

When New York model and influencer Wisdom Kaye went shopping at Italian fashion label Miu Miu and came home with a pile of clothes she says she spent $18,000 on, she didn’t expect some of the items to fall apart before her eyes.

In videos posted to his TikTok account, where he has over 13 million followers, Kaye can reveal his purchases from the brand. In the first clip, posted on the social media platform in early September, he calls himself a “huge Miu Miu fan” before launching into a scathing tirade about how some of his new purchases fell apart while unpacking them, saying: “As soon as I got home, everything fell apart.”

Among the clothes she had bought that day, one of the gold buttons on a denim vest “took off the moment I opened it,” she said in the video, showing how she had unbuttoned the sleeveless garment. “I just opened it normally,” Kaye said.

She then picked up a brown sweater, also by Miu Miu, with an obviously broken silver zipper. Kaye said he had “never gone and taken multiple pieces from one place and things break as soon as I get home. This is really abysmal.”

Three days later, Kaye reappeared on TikTok streams. Miu Miu had offered him the option of a refund or replacement of the broken items, he explained in the new video, noting that he chose the latter and wanted to reveal the new clothes to his fans. However, as he began to unbutton his waistcoat, a button fell off once again. His mouth fell open in disbelief before exclaiming, “No way! This is unbelievable.”

Kaye isn’t the only one taking their concerns to social media. In October, US-based dental hygienist Tiffany Kim shared a video on Instagram wearing a gray fleece jacket from Miu Miu and showed a drawstring ripped from one of its sleeves. Some viewers might immediately assume it was natural wear and tear, but Kim said she only bought it a month ago. While Miu Miu offers a repair service for its products, some store locations require customers to pay a fee. “It’s not even about the fee. I can pay the fee,” Kim said. “I don’t want to pay the fee because I literally paid $2,000 for this jacket and I only wore it twice.”

Elsewhere at X, a video posted by Elena Qiu in November shows the Seattle-based designer trying to cram various objects into the heel of her split-toe leather boots to show off their surprisingly hollow interior. The shoe, by Maison Margiela, is one of the French avant-garde label’s most recognizable styles. In the caption, Qiu said she bought the shoes for $1,000 and expressed her disappointment that the heel was not made of “stacked leather” but “hollow with plastic.”

“I felt so sad and disappointed when the shoe cap came off,” Qiu later told CNN via email. “As a fashion designer myself, I understand how painstaking the craft is and I don’t expect fashion to remain pristine after too much wear, but these shoes were not over-worn. I had worn them less than once a month, mostly for special occasions.” Asked what she eventually did with the shoes, Qiu said she took them to a cobbler to have the heel cap replaced, but has since become more careful about wearing them regularly and causing further damage — “which defeats the purpose of why I bought them in the first place,” she said.

These widely shared videos have since sparked outrage among social media users, with some questioning the value of high-end products, especially as prices rise exponentially over time. Others have criticized the luxury industry for what they see as too much focus on branding and trends, and not enough on durability. “As fashion consumers we need to put our feet down and stop buying Miu Miu until they learn how to produce clothes that don’t fall apart,” wrote Odunayo Ojo, the content creator better known as Fashion Roadman, as he reposted Kim’s video. “Just because it’s expensive doesn’t make it luxury if the quality isn’t there!” another user commented in reply.

Asked if the Prada group, which owns Miu Miu, is aware of these videos and what it is doing to prevent future product quality issues, the company told CNN that “These were two isolated incidents and are not indicative of quality issues for the brand. We handled both cases through customer service, with care, as we usually do with all our customers.” The group added that Miu Miu’s “global post-purchase return rate is between 0.2% and 0.3%, making it one of the lowest in the luxury market.”

Maison Margiela did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

So, is the quality of luxury fashion really declining?

The recent incidents may coincide with a wider issue in luxury fashion, where some experts believe that high prices no longer guarantee a certain level of craftsmanship. They have also drawn some comparisons to high street and fast fashion brands, which are often associated with trend-driven pieces that aren’t always built to last. Dana Thomas, an author and veteran journalist who spent more than three decades covering the luxury fashion sector for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, noted similar quality problems with luxury brands in the 2000s when her book “Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster” was released, indicating a long-standing problem in the sector.