Deluxe IV

So, "What do the rich do now?" a Hollywood producer friend asked her. For the ultimate in lingerie, the rich go to Alice Cadolle in Paris. The really rich still buy and wear couture, which runs from $20,000 for a basic suit to $100,000 for an evening gown. The really rich do not attend the couture shows for they don't even have to show up to shop. They, "who are richer than air," crossed the oceans by private jets for fitting. The women who buy couture don't want to be identified with actresses. More than a couple of these new fortunes live in China. In the United States, the rich shop at Giorgio Armani. For jewelry, the rich prefer custom-made. For handbags, the order Hermes. Yet they also shop at outlets. (p. 331-334)

Luxury was a successful niche business. But when luxury changed its target audience to the cost-conscious middle market that shops when flush but stops cold when times get tough, it made itself dangerously vulnerable to recessions. "Without tourism, Hong Kong," Joanne Ooi, president of East from Seventh Ltd., a wholesale showroom in Hong Kong for Western designers trying to break into the Asian market, "is only a city of six million inhabitants. How is it going to support nine Prada stores?" (p. 264)

She also interviewed Kenneth Fang, the chairman of Fang Bros. 肇豐, a company taking orders from luxury brands to produce knitwear in Guangdong, who took over the luxury Scottish cashmere knitwear company Pringle in 2000. (p. 226-32)

Counterfeiting. Santee Alley, Los Angeles, where fakes are sold, attracts everyone, including judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, affluent people from Newport Beach, and even the wives of the police. It confirms the old saying that "consumers don't buy luxury branded items for what they are, but for what they represent." Good fakes now represent socially the same thing as real.

Thomas recalled what she witnessed in the posh Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, where she saw a chic New Yorker in her fifties, well dressed in a designer pantsuit, good jewelry, and Chanel sunglasses. The woman asked the chief at the concierge desk, "Where can I buy a good fake Roles? You know, a really good fake." (p. 279-80)

Luxury has become democratic. Everyone could enjoy a taste of it, from lipsticks to ready-to-wear gowns. In today's luxury industry, outlets make good business sense: they sell goods that the movie stars, the flagships, the ads, and the billboards flack to the masses, but at a price that the masses can actually afford, sometimes in bulk. (p. 247)

Outlet shopping has formed part of our life. When luxury brands themselves go mass-market, however - selling a full range of goods in ubiquitous boutiques, outlets and duty-free stores and on their own Web sites - they undermine their well-crafted message. They become an everyday occurrence, a common presence. They aren't a luxury anymore. (p. 259)