Selling records

Caroline Weber reviews the book that got Julie Fredrickson talking about sample sales and non-industry label-crazed women: Dana Thomas's Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster. From Weber's review:

For Thomas, a cultural and fashion writer for Newsweek in Paris and the Paris correspondent for the Australian Harper’s Bazaar, the luxury industry is a sham because its offerings in no way merit the high price tags they command. Yet once upon a time, they most certainly did. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when many of luxury’s founding fathers first set up shop, paying more money meant getting something truly exceptional. Dresses from Christian Dior, luggage from Louis Vuitton, jewelry from Cartier: in the golden period of luxury, these items carried prestige because of their superior craftsmanship and design. True, only the very privileged could afford them, but it was this exclusivity that gave them their cachet. Although they may have “cared about making a profit,” the merchants who served this pampered class aimed chiefly “to produce the finest products possible.”

That's a stretch. Emile Zola's 1883 The Ladies' Paradise describes a mid-19th century Parisian department store, complete with a profiteering boss and customers willing to go broke in order to own the next big thing. The small shop owners who criticize the new, mass-produced, crass world of the department store are in fact no less sleazy and profit-minded than Ladies' Paradise owner Mouret. Capitalism did not begin with the craze for designer logos, and it certainly did not start with Louis Vuitton's latest merger. Every store offering 'organic,' 'free trade,' or 'high quality' is, as Rufus Wainwright said honestly and admirably of his performance in Central Park, "just trying to sell records." There's no shame in hoping your innovations bring about profit. The art of disguising that motivation is what leads to some goods being presented as virtuous or long-lasting and others--designer logo sunglasses, manicures, tobacco and alcohol products--as entirely unnecessary but there if you want them, the assumption being that enough people do and which variety they pick is the only question.

But back to clothing. If in the golden age of luxury, well-made products were for the wealthy and no one else, why was this a good thing? Shouldn't long-lasting, high-quality clothes be for those who cannot afford new ones every five minutes? And conversely, if you intend to buy new dresses each season, unless you are Nan Kempner (which I can safely say you are not), what do you care if the old ones last forever?