All cufflinks love brands. It is just a question of the brand maintaining its status for them. Knockoffs can kill a brands image.

You only have to look at the queues in the London sales. Chinese cannot get enough of upmarket brands. They don't do understated.

To my mind, it's lazy thinking to say "Asians are tacky and buy LV for vanity reasons" or whatever, as there are many different versions of this all over the world with many different products (say, Turnbull and Asser shirts, for example). There are many kinds of "Asian," of course - it would be interesting to see how these bags and status symbols are seen in Japan, Vietnam, etc...

My significant other is Filipino-American, and her mother loves bags. For her it is not necessarily one-upmanship or flashiness as much as reveling in something she earned, moving from a farm in the Philippines to (eventually) a white-collar job in New York City. She wants a bag that says "I'm successful" because she had to have things that said the opposite for so long...

I personally find all of these brands and the consumption of them relatively harmless... The collectivist versus individualist debate is interesting, and anything about how different cultures perceive products or possessions is fascinating precisely because it has so many layers... Oversimplification is the enemy... as is complacency. Or cynicism.

Hermes has certainly done a good job keeping their cachet intact, though. Very interesting topic Shooman.

Last edited by The_Shooman (2017-09-12 19:30:58)

An idea:

It seems to me that we're defining luxury as, "Company X makes a product that is very expensive and exclusive, and also unnecessary."

Then we're asking:

"What happens when Company X also offers things everybody can afford? Can the brand still be considered luxury if they offer less exclusive products?"

I would say yes. A luxury product is a luxury product is a luxury product. The most tricked out, high-end Mercedes is still luxury, even if they also offer entry-level versions that give peasants like ourselves the illusion of that luxury.

The expensive handbag is still luxury, even when owned by many, many people, because it is unnecessary and expensive. Even when owned by many, that expensive handbag is still "exclusive" because it is out of reach for so many.

I think we may be confusing a definition of luxury with a definition of demand by consumer. That is, a luxury handbag can still be luxury, but also be seen as undesirable because of how many people own it.

Hermes has managed their brand very well, so their bags, especially the Birkin, are both expensive and truly exclusive (or at least they have managed their image to continue to appear so). Alden shoes are a good example from our own world here on this forum. But I would argue that BMW is still a luxury brand.

What about the Tesla conundrum, i.e. a luxury brand that actually wants to be accessible to all, but can't achieve it because of the things you say above, 4F ("a luxury item cannot be mass produced").

I mean, the Model S is in the luxury sedan class, so technically it is marketed as luxury.

Last edited by The_Shooman (2017-10-14 06:59:27)

Just referring back to whether there is an luxury left, well, in terms of when I worked for a furniture factory, making high end branded lines I would say yes there are still luxury brands. Typically they're not overly branded companies,they normally old school makers who have contracts with 'luxury' companies. Even in the same factory the level of workmanship that went into an own brand luxury sofa vs a heavily marketed and branded luxury line was huge. And the difference is typically what you can't see.

Last edited by The_Shooman (2017-10-15 20:41:17)