Fashion influencers pay big bucks for Payless shoes during fake, grand opening experiment

A pair of Payless shoes for $500? While that price point may seem high, fashion influencers attending a party they thought was in celebration of the opening of “Palessi” paid that and more.

The affordable shoe retailer recently took over a former Armani store in Santa Monica, California, stocked it with Payless Shoesource merchandise and invited people to attend the store’s opening, Fortune magazine reported. But partygoers who thought they were attending the store opening for a different high-end designer, Palessi, were actually attending a staged experiment.

Shoes usually priced at Payless for under $40 were purchased for between $200 and $600. Many of the partygoers commented on the “elegant” and “classy” purchases that were “made with high-quality materials,” a YouTube video of the experiment revealed.

The experiment’s goal, Fortune reported, was to remind customers that the retailer is a place to shop for affordable fashion.

More than $3,000 worth of shoes were sold in the first few hours. Those purchases, and the reactions when the buyers discovered they were buying Payless shoes, seen in the string of YouTube videos below, will appear in a series of ads on cable networks and social media, AdWeek reported.