Luxury the new McDonald's

Louis Vuitton mogul Bernaud Arnault.

Dana Thomas is stuffing envelopes with copies of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre and writing notes to go with them. What to say to Bernard Arnault, chairman of Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, one of the world’s biggest producers of luxury goods? "Oh, I dunno. 'I hope you enjoy my book'," she says. Arnault will have a fit.
The French mogul is fingered as a fiendish money-making former property developer with no artistic sensibility and Louis Vuitton is characterised as the McDonald’s of the luxury industry. "A million served," says Thomas drily. The logo is as recognisable as the golden arches. "It really is. I would certainly put it in the top 10, along with Nike, Coca-Cola."
That actually could be music to Arnault’s ears. It means Louis Vuitton is selling stupendously and making pots of money for the tycoon and his shareholders. But, for devotees, the message is devastating. It means the famous logo no longer has the cachet it once had. It still costs an arm and a leg, yet those buying are not the aristocratic clients who coveted craftsmanship and exclusivity. Instead, they’re the new luxury-obsessed middleclass consumers addicted to brands, not for quality, but for what they represent. And now they don’t even have that.
How has this come about? Thomas says it’s because of greedy designers wanting to cash in on rising disposable incomes and new Asian markets. "Luxury goods are the only area in which it is possible to make luxury margins," as Arnault puts it. Many cut corners and use inferior materials; many outsource to developing nations where labour is cheap and goods are made mostly on machines. So what are consumers paying for when quality has given way to quantity? That’s the big question.
"It sure is," Thomas says. "We are paying more for marketing hype and profits for shareholders than we are for craftsmanship. That’s proven when you look at handbags."
She visited a factory in China where luxury handbags were turned out for $US100 ($122) and sold at Harvey Nichols, Hong Kong, for 12 times that amount.
"And where is that money going? Not to middlemen. To the factory owners and paying for gigantic ad campaigns that make you want to buy these things."
Everyone swoons over glossy magazine advertisements, yet, unless you are size 0, the goodies are more and more impractical.
Especially gross is the generic "It" bag of which former Gucci designer Tom Ford yodelled, "It’s like you gotta have it or you’ll die." Now self-employed, he says, "All those handbags make me sick. It’s so formula