Driving to the airport, I see a girl in a t.shirt and jeans with a “Hermes Birkin” bag. It was an obvious knockoff. I  posted about Sarah Jessica Parkers $10 dress before I left for the airport, so ultimately I started to wonder about commerce and luxury.  Jade Jaggers’ quarter million dollar dagger, (I still dont get it) and the rise of newly moneyed  people who dont quite get the concept of luxury.

Its not luxurious if everybody has it or if you want it because you know who has one. That is to say, a luxury good may become a normal good or even an inferior good at different income levels, e.g. a wealthy person stops buying increasing numbers of luxury cars for his automobile collection to start collecting airplanes (at such an income level, the luxury car would become an inferior good). (wikipedia) The fact that you have a Bentley does not instantly confer legitimacy to your cause. Are you listening, Kim Kardashian.  

The status of owning luxury brands is important for the affluent or high net worth consumer, as they feel it expresses their class or self-expression. Advertising also ensures that other people who cannot afford the luxury item are nonetheless aware of its expense, which is essential to conferring the status that the consumption of luxury promises.

The global business pressures on high-end fashion—the weak dollar, where to manufacture the stuff, how to recognize and develop new market is transforming luxury. If the Chinese can make a fab knockoff, for a fraction of the price,using relatively quality materials, then where is the beef?.

I think more and more, we’ll see good stuff that more and more doesn’t impress us, either because of the transparently thin manufacturing quality or the design values. Is it enough these days, that the item bears a name? or that carrying the item confers instant status on its wearer? The fact that a celebrity has it, does this lend any form of credibility to the product? This, ladies and gentlemen is ultimately the business of fashion.  Sell, sell, sell! and then sell some more.

These supposedly high end companies can get away with it. It becomes ultimately who can produce the gitziest marketing campaigns.  Throw on the celebs and models, make a lot of noise, and, voila!—here is fashion. The need to sell, produce some images, connect, and valuate the experience pervades everything. Then, we buy this pitch.

The term luxury, is so useless and phony these days. It’s used nowadays to sell almost anything, often something cheesy, like a luxury pet bed.  Its thrown around almost as much as the word “classy”. I could never figure out the juxtapositioning of the two words “classy dame” or “classy broad”.   So much of luxury items are so badly made, mass produced and you begin to wonder where to really spend your hard earned money.  You truly begin to wonder, Is it worth it?