What apt timing! We were just discussing whether we bought
branded fashion goods in a separate thread here when lo and behold,
in the Herald Sun on Saturday (23 Feb 2008), there was an article
exposing the luxury fashion industry! 
Here's the article - it might cause you
to think twice before spending all that money on atas brands from
now on :
TO HELL IN A HANDBAG, Dina Rosendorff
Dana Thomas flits between fluent French and her native English
as she negotiates with a parisian taxi driver while doing this
long-distance phone interview.
The American author is on her way to a photo shoot for the
sleeve of the paperback version of her best-selling book, Deluxe :
How Luxury Lost Its Lustre.
The high-end world of fashion hasn't been the same since Thomas
peeled off the gloss to expose a decidedly unglamorous reality.
Consumers were shocked to
realise many of their most coveted brands were actually cheaply
mass-produced in secret chinese sweatshops for a fraction of their
hefty price tags.
We were horrified to learn
there were tricks to get around a "made in China" label; by sewing
it into an inside pocket or adding a bag's handle in Italy, thus
allowing it to carry the "made in Italy" tag. And even more
frightening was the sneaky way some brands actually imported
Chinese workers to Italy, using cheap labour but still claiming the
goods were "made in Italy".
The goal is gross - it's not about producing a beautiful
product," Thomas says.
Once the luxury market was the domain of the elite - the only
ones who could afford the exquisite tailoring and hand-made pieces.
Now, Thomas says, the industry is more focused on "massclusivity".
Thomas says 60% of young Japanese women own a Louis Vuitton
handbag. Chanel's iconic No. 5 perfume is sold every 30
seconds.
While many would applaud the democratisation of luxury, which
has rendered Gucci, Dior and Prada readily accessible to
middle-class masses, Thomas
sees the luxury market as a profit-hungry global cash cow run by
quality-sacrificing corporations.
The change was spearheaded by Bernard Arnault, a French property
developer who, in 1984, broke into fashion by buying Christian
Dior. Now the chairman of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy), he
runs a conglomerate that includes Fendi, Loewe, Kenzo, Givenchy and
De Beers. Under Arnault, the transformation was complete :
luxury was no longer lovingly
produced by couturiers, but by tycoons, who valued profit over
perfection. (Needless to say, Thomas wasn't
invited to Louis Vuitton's last womenswear show).
Thomas has no gripes with the Joe and Joanne Consumers of this
world walking around with logo-embossed handbags. "I think
the democratisation of luxury is fantastic ... a generation or two
ago we would walk past the store and if we weren't of a certain
class, our mothers would whisper to us if we wanted to go in, "No,
we don't belong there', as if it were a country club or a secret
society.
But basically, she says, they just don't make luxury the way
they used to.
"The product that you bought in the early '90's is not the same
product you're buying now, which is certainly not the same product
your parents bought in the '50's.
Corners have been
cut: next to nothing is hand-stitched, one Italian
brand cuts sleeves 1cm shorter, and lining is a relic of the
past.
A self-proclaimed outsider, Thomas says she felt free to lay
bare the masquerade of high-end fashion without fear of
ostracism.
"The fashion media is in cahoots with the fashion industry," she
says matter-of-factly.
She recently left Newsweek after 12 years - "which is huge: it
was a big step, leaving the mother ship"- and joined Portfolio, a
new masthead, where she will write about luxury fashion and culture
from a business standpoint.
She also plans to make a documentary based on her book, which
made the New York Times bestseller list.
Thomas says trend-setters have cottoned on to the devaluation of
luxury - and have moved on.
Although the big brands will still sell to the insatiable
markets of Russia and China, Thomas believes there is a move
towards slow-fashion - a return to real luxury.
"Like in slow food, it's a return to what luxury really was a
generation ago," she says.
