Deluxe Quotes

“Unlike perfume, handbags are visible on the body, and--like Air Jordans for teenagers--give the wearer the chance to brandish the logo and publicly declare her status or aspiration.”
― Dana Thomas, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster

“Their primary customers are upper-income women between thirty and fifty years sold.

The average markup on a handbag is ten to twelve times production cost.

Perfume has, for more than seventy years, served as an introduction to a luxury brand.

The message was clear: buy our brand and you too, will live a luxury life.

The contradiction between personal indulgence and conspicuous consumption is the crux of the luxury business today: the convergence of its history with its current reality.

Today, luxury brand items are collected like baseball cards, displayed like artwork, brandished like iconography.

The tycoons have shifted the focus from what the product is to what is represents.

Perfume has a mystical, magical quality. It catches your attention, enchants you. It complements and enhances your personality. it stirs emotion, within you and others around you. Perfume was a link between gods and mortals. It was a way to contact the gods, Hermes's Jean-Claude Ellena told me. Now it is a profane link: it's between you and me.

Contentment is natural wealth. Luxury is artificial poverty. Socrates

More than anything else today, the handbag tells the story of a woman: her reality, her dreams.

Oscar Wilde said elegance is power.

If it would abolish avarice, you must abolish its mother, luxury. Cicero

People don't believe there is a difference between real and fake anymore. Bernard Arnault's marketing plan had worked: consumers don't buy luxury branded items for what they are, but for what they represent.

Luxury is the ease of a T-shirt in a very expensive dress. If you don't have it, you are not a person used to luxury. You are just a rich person who can buy staff. Karl Lagerfeld

Luxury is exclusivity, it is made for you and no one else has it. At a minimum, it must be impeccable. Maximum, unique.

If you do luxury, Louboutin explained, you have to treat people in a human way and you have to be elegant. You can't ask poor people in bad conditions to make beautiful things.”
― Dana Thomas, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster

“Real luxurious people hate status. You don’t look rich because you have a rich dress. When you look at a person, do you see the spirit or the sexiness or the creativity? Just to see a big diamond, what does it mean? It’s all about satisfaction. I think it’s horrible, this judgment based on money. It’s all an illusion that you look better because you have a symbol of luxury. Really, it doesn’t bring you anything. It’s so banal.”
― Dana Thomas, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre

“Mao suits,”
― Dana Thomas, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster

“I visited a factory in Guangdong Province and held the bags in my hands. To see them, I had to promise the manufacturer that I wouldn’t reveal the brand names. Each brand made the manufacturer sign a confidentiality agreement stipulating that he could not reveal the fact that he produced their products in China.”
― Dana Thomas, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster

“Simultaneously, most luxury companies have raised their brands’ prices exponentially, and many justify the move by falsely claiming that their goods are made in Western Europe, where labor is expensive.”
― Dana Thomas, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster

“Hoje em dia, falsificar luxo é fácil. Colocam-se alguns detalhes do passado da marca, coloca-se um pouco de ouro e pronto. (Miuccia Prada)”
― Dana Thomas, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster