in a marketing move now dubbed massclusivity
Deluxe: How Luxury Lost fake designer bags Its Lustre By Dana Thomas Allen Lane, 384pp, $32.95
THE Roman philosopher and politician Cicero was high quality designer replica handbags an energetic social climber. Once, keen to 1:1 replica handbags impress, he splashed out on a citron wood table that cost a thousand times the average annual wage. Suddenly everyone wanted citron wood tables. Carpenters made faux versions. "Wealth itself didn confer status," classicist and historian Jonathan Stamp, the story source, told Newsweek fashion and culture reporter Dana Thomas for her book on the luxury marketplace. Designer Louis Vuitton Replica Handbags "You needed wealth plus something else, like objects."
Now we have handbags that cost as much as the average annual Australian salary; personalised scent that is priced higher. Moscow, infested with new millionaires and billionaires, has been overtaken by the massive luxury shopping complexes that clump in any city with dollars to spare. GUM, the once grim State Universal Store, sells Dior. In Brazil, there is a five storey store in Sao Paulo so tailored to the uber wealthy that customers can browse for couture gowns, yachts or helicopters. Many of the rest of us, as eager as Cicero, pant to keep up, splurging either on designer goods replica designer handbags or fakes that supposedly show how very deluxe we are too.
Uche Okonkwo writes in her academic work on the same subject, "It is quite challenging to find another sector apart replica louis vuitton bags from china from luxury goods that can claim an emotional connection with their consumers to such an extent that the desire for a product increases Fake Louis Vuitton Replica Bags as the price tag increases."
Okonkwo, a consultant to luxury businesses, wants to capitalise on our replica louis vuitton bags acquisitiveness with her book, showing interested parties how to milk us more. Thomas, a Philadelphian from a conservative background, is on another mission. She sees through our pretensions. With its array of reportage, colour and anecdotes, her book tests the theory that a fool and his or her money are soon parted.
Thomas asks: has luxury lost its lustre? You have to think so high quality replica handbags china as her chapters take us from perfume manufacturers cutting corners on scent bottles to luxury goods outlet stores where designer label duds are dumped on the discount market. Luxury, Thomas laments, was once an adjective applied to goods so finely put together they were affordable only by a select and very rich few. Then, along came Bernard Arnault, a French property developer who, in 1984, broke into the luxury goods market with the acquisition of Christian Dior. Now he is the chairman of LVMH or Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, a conglomerate with brands such as Fendi, Loewe, Kenzo, Givenchy cheap louis vuitton bags from china uk and De Beers.
replica louis vuitton Arnault decided to have his cake and eat it too. Luxury would no longer be the province of just the super rich. In a marketing move now dubbed "massclusivity" Arnault would make luxury available to many, many more, and would increase his company profits drastically.
But if it looks too good to be true, it usually is. Arnault version of luxury, soon copied by others, turns out to be a chimera. Thomas shows that so called luxury goods are now put together by poorly paid workers in Spain and North Africa, or China, Mexico and Mauritius. There are tricks to get around a "made in China" label. It may be sewn into the bottom seam of an inside pocket. Or a bag handle may be added in Italy allowing it to carry the "made in Italy" tag. Meanwhile, the huge rise in manufacturing in places such as Guangdong province in China causes environmental, labour and water supply problems.
Thomas book provides mesmerising insider glimpses, such as the Oscars chapter, which depicts greedy millionaire actors extracting payments and goods from deluxe designers in return for wearing their shoes, gowns, watches and jewellery to the awards.
If you think Thomas exaggerates, Luxury Fashion Branding by Uche Okonkwo will wakeyou up like a disdainful finger snap from Arnault himself. which sounds like something that should belong in a satirical novel but isn It is instead "the world pioneer business management consultancy company specialising in the luxury industry". Okonkwo knows her business; and she knows its market. She writes: "Luxury fashion provides a means to a lifestyle that is triggered by deep psychological and emotional needs."
With its precise distinctions between true luxury, prestige, premium and mass luxury, Okonkwo replica louis vuitton handbags treatise repeats the joke Nancy Mitford originally played on English society when she wrote about U v non U in her 1955 essay, The English Aristocracy. Except where Mitford was being mischievous when she listed the differences between upper class and non upper class vocabulary ("wealthy: non U for U rich . sweet: non U for U pudding"), Okonkwo is serious about her delineations. Luxury Fashion Branding has been put together with the zeal of a taxonomer labelling a precious new species.
Thomas finds the zenith or nadir of luxury at Dasluv, that Sao Paulo emporium where each customer has a personal sales
On that point, Okonkwo and Thomas agree. We aspire to luxury because we believe, or want to believe, we are special too.
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