One of the most memorable anecdotes in Dana Thomas' excellent book, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster was that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, some victims used their Red Cross vouchers to buy Louis Vuitton bags instead of food and supplies. I wonder if they felt the bags would nourish them more, either to make them feel better by bringing their lives a touch of glamor or as an opportunity to bring in extra cash if they sold them on eBay to others desperate for a piece of the dream. Either way, it is a testament to the power of the perception of luxury, of a belief that possessing the right things make one somehow more right. And that need, Thomas argues, has been carefully cultivated with ferocious tenacity by the dwindling handful of corporate owners of the myriad number of luxury brands that haunt our dreams.
Written in 2007, the text is already somewhat dated, as ostentatious consumerism has been tempered somewhat in the wake of the economic downturn that bore down upon us in 2008. Still, she makes a compelling case that we are obsessed with buying and specifically, buying into luxury. And that is because, she argues, for many more people, the luxury fruit doesn't hang so high on the tree. Luxury companies, like Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, she argues, used to serve only the super rich, and produced items handcrafted in small numbers by skilled artisans, and the very few with the means to purchase these items paid mightily for them. And so it went. For decades, luxury items were for the very rich. The rest of us could never dream of owning them.
But over the last 20 years, luxury became big business and executives realized that value could be infused into not quality but in status, in the logo, in the "It" bag. And everyone wanted status. And everyone could feel like they could have it. Quietly, executives started targeting the middle class, not the truly rich, and while they staged splashy runway shows to stoke the fires of desire, their bread and butter became the aspirational entry-level items, the perfumes, the sunglasses, and especially, the handbags. These are the small items that the middle class can grasp onto and be part of the dream. A $300 pair of sunglasses, while expensive, isn't a $5,000 dress, and you can wear them every day, and everyone will see the conspicuously-placed Prada label, and you will be a part of It.
At the same time the target customer has secretly become the not-so-wealthy, the quality of many luxury items, Thomas argues, has gone down. With the exception of a few companies (Hermès receives a particularly glowing write up for their individual hand-craftsmenship), many have quietly moved their manufacturing overseas to mass-production factories and have subtly cut corners on craftsmanship and materials. Bags and logo-branded smaller items took over a bigger part of the advertising budget.
Of course, the major fashion design houses do have truly talented designers working on crafting beautiful things, that brighten our world and help us express ourselves in a way that makes us our best, most chic, most creative selves. I love style, I love aesthetics, I love the self-expression of adornment. Every season I check out the collections on style.com. This book did nothing to temper those feelings, but it did provide a helpful reminder that behind the creative visionaries, fashion is still a business intent on making a profit. I was reminded how important it is to like beautiful things because they truly speak to me and to try to resist buying into the fantasy of marketing hype.
I'd recommend Deluxe to anyone interested in fashion, in economics, in globalization, and, of course, in luxury (whatever that means).
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