Tuesday, March 18, 2025

A luxury that has lived a life - editorial for Communicate 183

This is my editorial for the issue number 183 of Communicate, enjoy!
 

In 2010, while I was visiting a friend in San Francisco, and on a whim, we went into thrift store. John, my friend who is the CEO of a huge company, absent-mindedly rummaged briefly through the racks and decided he did not want anything. I threw an eagle-eyed look at the store, went to that basket near the cashier, and immediately took out a tie. I paid 6,25 USD Dollars for it. Showed it to John, his jaw dropped. “Would you gift it to me? Please?” He said. Or rather pleaded. The tie in question was the ultra-rare, obnoxiously expensive vintage Versace Miami print in mint condition. He wore it the next day to his board meeting and returned with giddy glee to the rave reviews he received.

Another time, I was at a second-hand store in Beirut. I saw a pair of shoes, instinctively knew what they were and casually strolled to get them. Before I reached for them another woman grabbed them, and although they were in pristine condition, she – thankfully – decided against them and threw them back carelessly. I took the pair without even trying them on, went and paid for them – 2 USD if you want to know – and bang!

These are not isolated stories. My life – or rather closet and house - are full of them. In today’s world, the word luxury is loaded. Its meaning shifting and morphing from one generation to the next. Originally, and according to the Oxford dictionary, the word means “a state of great comfort or elegance, especially when involving great expense.”

Yet, paradoxically, Hermes artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas says that the brand is costly, not expensive. “Expensive is a product, which is not delivering what it is supposed to deliver, but you paid quite a large amount of money for it, and then it betrays you”. It feels as if this hinges on a technically. Yet, in 2024, major “luxury brands” were embroiled in a sweatshop scandal – in Italy no less - whereby a 2600 Euros bag was costing 53 Euros to make while using workers toiling in abominable conditions.

Speaking of Hermes, somewhere between Chirstmas and New Year’s Walmart, the discount department stores in the US, sold – what is technically a “dupe”. A product which looks like very expensive designer item is but is a copy, which is a tendency that invaded the markets when people could not afford the originals. The dupe in question was dubbed the Wirkin, or Walmart Birkin, for the price of 78 USD for the regular leather and 200 USD for its premium leather – literally at the 1/100th of the price of the original.

Right now, the world of luxury brands however, is in full crisis. The Chinese – often the backbone of the clientele - found themselves in a wave of real estate crash and wave of youth unemployment. Currently, major houses, including LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy), Kering, and other such empires find themselves playing catch-up for having lost 60 million “aspiring shoppers” and concentrating on their Very Important Clients (VIPs) who still found themselves short-thrifted on experience and treatment when compared to how much they were buying. Only Hermes rode the crisis high, still producing its extremely “costly” bags – the Kelly and the Birkin – and still enjoying the aura of their exclusiveness.

The more we delve into the word, the more complicated in becomes. If “vintage” is indeed luxury, then no wonder the world of second-hand, deadstock merchandise, upcycling, thrifting, and pre-loved is booming throughout the world. The value of that market is supposed to reach 113.2 Billion USD by 2030 up from 42.5 Billion in 2023. So much that major brands are initiating second-hand lines from their overstock, archive pieces or garments and accessories cosigned by their clients from previous collections.

Mona Ayoub, who in 2023 auctioned many items of her haute couture Chanel wardrobe, said of her coat which took 800 hours to make and embroider and which sold at 312000 Dollars: “I wore it at a venue when Karl [Lagerfeld – former chanel designer] was present”. She styled it open “over a turtleneck and a pair of pants. “When Karl saw me he was so shocked and asked me how could I do that. I told him that I gained weight and can’t close it. He then laughed and said to me, ‘join the club’.” Because even owning such exclusive pieces cannot negate you from gaining weight and not fitting into them.

Luxury is so multifaceted, it could be a nice meal, a good night’s sleep, a treasured sweater from high school, a simple wedding band with sentimental value, time spent with family (or “chosen family” as the expression goes), or time alone.

Speaking of time, in 1988, watchmaker Piaget came up with a series of ads which went "La plus belle facon de porter une Piaget c'est de n'en rien montrer" – “the most beautiful way to wear a piaget, is not to show any of it”. Because you are wearing it for yourself, not for bragging. Because self-appreciation beats all show-off.

In Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s lovely book “The Little Prince”, the titular hero meets up with a merchant selling pills that quench thirst. You only needed to take one per week and feel no need to drink. Apparently this saved 53 minutes a week. The prince, in his own logic said, “if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.”

Because walking at one’s leisure toward a spring of fresh water is, indeed a luxury.