There is a price to pay for success. In the world of luxury however, brands rarely are the victims but the clients can be.
Yesterday, I was told the story of a shop assistant who'd saved money for months to buy a Louis Vuitton bag.
It had been her dream for years. She'd been longing for the bag and dreamed about it as a symbol of what she wished to convey in terms of self image.
Her first outings with the bag did not give her the expected effect as friends and acquaintances complimented her on how "real" her "fake" Louis Vuitton looked. Appalled, she thought at first it was normal for the people who knew her lifestyle and salary level to assume her bag was a fake as it was discordant with her status but she kept catching snide comments in the bus, the tramway, the restaurants etc
Buying any item from Louis Vuitton with the monogram canvas - the most imitated brand´s staples- has become risky for those who can´t get exposed to the scrutiny for buying "real" doesn´t guarantees to be treated better.
A dedicated buyer of luxury myself, I don´t buy "tacky" since I don´t need the validation. I buy bags I like and so do I with clothes so I thought no one would believe my bags are imitations So it was a big surprise when entering my favourite Yves St Laurent boutique wearing one of my Mombasa bags I heard a sales assistant say with a suspicious air that my bag has a "weird" colour, implying that it was a fake.
Even though I know my Mombasa is the real deal, it made me realise that the shopkeeper's perception of me was that I don´t belong to the world of "privileged" and she assumed that my bag would be automatically to be a fake.
In this materialistic world, acquiring a status symbol is no longer enough, it is a question of the riches of the world considering you to belonging in it. If one wears labels, one has to be consistent all the way. Clothes, lifestyle, car, flat, address, interior design, holiday etc are all the criteria you will be judged upon... If you wear cheap shoes with your Birkin, it won´t even matter whether you spend a yearly rent on it, you will not be considered "worth it".
This is a contradiction of the most perverse nature since 80% of Louis Vuitton´s turnover is represented by the sales of items priced 500€ on average, a price that belongs to the lowest price range of their lines. Even though the whole establishment has been buying Louis Vuitton for over a century, one has to own all the other signs of wealth to be considered "worth" it. If you don't belong, don´t buy the monogramme canvas if you don´t want to expose to nocive remarks.
Luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton certainly are watching out for for the middle ranges that tend to take market share in the luxury entry price point market (Longchamp, Lancel, Anya Hindmarch etc). Gucci or Fendi have decided to dissociate their brand and their canvas products.One of the resort lately was to invest in marketing around their heritage items, thus Gucci featuring the "iconic" symbols such as the green-red bi-colour band or the Baguette when it comes to Fendi. Yet, again, in this world of reality, the turnover is mostly made by the wannabes ready to spend 500€ on a bag that will provide them with the validation and signs of success. For it is very human after all to scream about financial realisation.
So, maybe, if spending more than 1000€ on a Louis Vuitton item, think about buying an iconic item.
