Like Iago implanting the idea in Othello's head that Desdemona is unfaithful, Chinese creators of luxury branded goods are embedding the notion that they are the ones producing handbags for the likes of Hermes, Louis Vuitton, and Dior. Not 'genuine-fake' Guccis et al, but the vero affare, with valued logos and 'Made in Italy' tags.
One viral video from an alleged Birkin bag manufacturer reveals that a bag selling at a retail price of $34,000 costs around $1,400 to make in his factory. So why not, the man in the video proclaims, buy it straight from us? Trump-tariff mind games are in play, with Chinese whispers infiltrating the mystical world of luxury brands.
Even if these declarations from purported Chinese leather master craftsmen are Jacobin propaganda, with the Banksy-like intent to burst the 'Emperor's New Clothes' bubble, brand value is such a thing, that a growing rumour of 'inauthenticity' can be corrosive. 'More than 90% of the price is for the logo,' says the Chinese 'Birkin-man'. 'But if you do not care about the logo and want the same quality, same material, you can just buy from us.' At a tenth-of the ooh-la-la-la price.
High-end luxury goods, like art, famously stand on three pillars: quality assurance, scarcity, and brand stature. Keeping the highest of qualities intact, there's the sacrilegious threat of 'disrupting' precious scarcity by increasing volume.
These Veblen goods - named after economist Thorstein Veblen, who identified the dynamics of conspicuous consumption as a mode of status-seeking - are positional goods. These are goods valued only by how they are distributed in the market, not by how many of them there are available in total. Less is literally more. So, selling top-end luxury products in high(er) numbers could be the equivalent of ransacking Versailles.
Which leaves us with the third pillar: the spell of brand prestige. Like Rome, the world's top luxury brands weren't built in a day. If the Chinese whispers do take effect, it would be interesting to see whether even the hyper-rich will buy a Coquille d'Oeuf Minaudiere bag for $101,000 from an LVMH outlet if the same can be bought for a fraction of that price from a Chinese distributor. As long as the precious clutch, 'hand-arranged by skilled artists for over 300 hours with 12,500 pieces of tiny eggshells,' retains its lux-cellence, would the Louis Vuitton logo matter?
Ah, but it would, mes amis. For, the hypnotised wants the hypnotist to hypnotise her. Having that LV tag is the bag screaming, sotto voce of course, the price tag - which is (almost) the whole purpose of Veblen goods. Unless, of course, along with the current trade war, a logo war erupts with the advent of indistinguishable 'genuine-fake' luxury brand tags.
We tend to think of Chinese goods as, well, Chinese goods - cheap, dinky, and reliably unreliable. But there's another side to Chinese manufacturing (read: artisanship) in the form of feiyi goods. 'Feiyi' is a Chinese term for 'intangible cultural heritage,' and has gained traction over the last few years among wealthy, young Chinese luxury consumers.
Embroidered horse-face skirts, a much-sought after feiyi designer wear among the rich, generated over $7 mn in gross merchandise value (GMV) and saw a 680% increase in search volume. Remember, in 2022, this haute couture item made news when Dior had appropriated a design without acknowledging its 'inspiration'.
In Philip K Dick's classic 1962 alternative history novel, The Man in the High Castle, a character finds in an American object d'art 'wu', Chinese for 'awareness'. 'The hands of the artificer,' he says on marvelling a piece of handcrafted jewellery, 'had wu, and allowed that wu to flow into this piece.... By contemplating it, we gain more wu ourselves. We experience the tranquillity associated not with art but with holy things... Here, an artificer has put wu into the object, rather than merely witnessed the wu inherent in it.'
Is wu the intangible contained in the world's most cherished brands? Can China's master artisans infuse their beautiful objects with it? I have a niggling feeling that this 'tranquility associated not with art but with holy things' is the price tag itself. At least for the rarefied inhabitants of Planet Ultra-Lux.
One viral video from an alleged Birkin bag manufacturer reveals that a bag selling at a retail price of $34,000 costs around $1,400 to make in his factory. So why not, the man in the video proclaims, buy it straight from us? Trump-tariff mind games are in play, with Chinese whispers infiltrating the mystical world of luxury brands.
Even if these declarations from purported Chinese leather master craftsmen are Jacobin propaganda, with the Banksy-like intent to burst the 'Emperor's New Clothes' bubble, brand value is such a thing, that a growing rumour of 'inauthenticity' can be corrosive. 'More than 90% of the price is for the logo,' says the Chinese 'Birkin-man'. 'But if you do not care about the logo and want the same quality, same material, you can just buy from us.' At a tenth-of the ooh-la-la-la price.
High-end luxury goods, like art, famously stand on three pillars: quality assurance, scarcity, and brand stature. Keeping the highest of qualities intact, there's the sacrilegious threat of 'disrupting' precious scarcity by increasing volume.
These Veblen goods - named after economist Thorstein Veblen, who identified the dynamics of conspicuous consumption as a mode of status-seeking - are positional goods. These are goods valued only by how they are distributed in the market, not by how many of them there are available in total. Less is literally more. So, selling top-end luxury products in high(er) numbers could be the equivalent of ransacking Versailles.
Which leaves us with the third pillar: the spell of brand prestige. Like Rome, the world's top luxury brands weren't built in a day. If the Chinese whispers do take effect, it would be interesting to see whether even the hyper-rich will buy a Coquille d'Oeuf Minaudiere bag for $101,000 from an LVMH outlet if the same can be bought for a fraction of that price from a Chinese distributor. As long as the precious clutch, 'hand-arranged by skilled artists for over 300 hours with 12,500 pieces of tiny eggshells,' retains its lux-cellence, would the Louis Vuitton logo matter?
Ah, but it would, mes amis. For, the hypnotised wants the hypnotist to hypnotise her. Having that LV tag is the bag screaming, sotto voce of course, the price tag - which is (almost) the whole purpose of Veblen goods. Unless, of course, along with the current trade war, a logo war erupts with the advent of indistinguishable 'genuine-fake' luxury brand tags.
We tend to think of Chinese goods as, well, Chinese goods - cheap, dinky, and reliably unreliable. But there's another side to Chinese manufacturing (read: artisanship) in the form of feiyi goods. 'Feiyi' is a Chinese term for 'intangible cultural heritage,' and has gained traction over the last few years among wealthy, young Chinese luxury consumers.
Embroidered horse-face skirts, a much-sought after feiyi designer wear among the rich, generated over $7 mn in gross merchandise value (GMV) and saw a 680% increase in search volume. Remember, in 2022, this haute couture item made news when Dior had appropriated a design without acknowledging its 'inspiration'.
In Philip K Dick's classic 1962 alternative history novel, The Man in the High Castle, a character finds in an American object d'art 'wu', Chinese for 'awareness'. 'The hands of the artificer,' he says on marvelling a piece of handcrafted jewellery, 'had wu, and allowed that wu to flow into this piece.... By contemplating it, we gain more wu ourselves. We experience the tranquillity associated not with art but with holy things... Here, an artificer has put wu into the object, rather than merely witnessed the wu inherent in it.'
Is wu the intangible contained in the world's most cherished brands? Can China's master artisans infuse their beautiful objects with it? I have a niggling feeling that this 'tranquility associated not with art but with holy things' is the price tag itself. At least for the rarefied inhabitants of Planet Ultra-Lux.
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