KEY POINTS:
Some women I know will have to avoid this book like the plague for it will ruin their favourite self-indulgence, shopping for mostly unnecessary, always expensive designer items.
Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre (Penguin, $37) looks at the world of designer brands from every conceivable angle.
Author Dana Thomas is a Newsweek journalist who's covered the fashion beat for years and for this 346-page expose she click-clacked round the world on her Manolos researching the history and modern reality of the best-known luxury brands: Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Prada and more. What she discovered is that much of it - although thankfully not all - is just one great big con. The luxury goods industry is a US$157 billion ($214 billion) business and many of the once-family run companies founded in the 18th and 19th centuries by artisans have been snapped up by big conglomerates. LVMH, for example, is run by French tycoon Bernard Arnault and owns up to 50 flash brands including Louis Vuitton, Moet & Chandon and Givenchy. To companies like this, argues Thomas, luxury is now all marketing and the bottom line is an exercise in cynicism that has turned what was once covetable into something available to anyone, anywhere. "In order to make luxury accessible," writes Thomas, "tycoons have stripped away all that has made it special."
She devotes chapters to perfumes and handbags, because what design houses make from clothes is negligible, compared to the profits from these mass-market items.
Thanks to Hollywood stars photographed parading the streets clutching a double mocha latte in one hand and an It-bag in the other, crazily expensive handbags have become objects of desire for women once content to tote their necessities in something more modest. Now they spend thousands on a Bottega Veneta woven leather bag. Handbags are the perfect "entry "level" designer purchase. This thrills the design houses, especially when Vuitton can sell a handbag for about13 times what it costs to make. And, although the companies deny it, Thomas says she's seen how many brands manufacture goods in China where production costs are 30 to 40 per cent less than in Italy.
This was a brave book to write and it reads as if it has been well researched. The most shocking chapter is on counterfeiting. I had no idea some profits are believed to fund international terrorism.
Thomas does find one place where the rich can still feel special: in a Brazilian design emporium called Daslu. There you get your own salesgirl - a Dasluzette - and can spend three days exploring the vast interconnecting salons stuffed with desirable things. It sounds splendid.
- Detours, HoS