Thursday, January 28, 2010

Deluxe, with fries.

Mandatory reading for all you label whores: "Deluxe: How Luxury Lost It's Luster" 
                                                                       by Dana Thomas.





This book is a true schooling on how little fashion houses sold their souls for a buck and sold you the ostrich satchel for twelve hundred bucks.
Dana Thomas, is a fashion writer for Newsweek.   She explores the evolution of luxury, beginning as something exclusive and elitist, and mutating to its current globalized state.  The basis of luxury lies in its rarity, less really is more.  So the fact that 40% of the Asian continent owns at least one piece of Louis Vuitton shoots rarity right in the ass.
Thomas argues more money is being made but mediocrity is at an all time high and prices are too.
She says, "Today the average handbag cost 10 to 12 times its production cost."
Commerce trumps art :-(

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