In the book Deluxe: How Luxury Lose Its Luster, Dona Thomas wrote in sharp tone that “big designer brand groups claim to democratize fashion as to make their products available to every people, which sounds so lofty, hell, almost like communism! But it is not so, it is capitalism from the inside out, and the goal is explicit—to make more money.”
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Decreasing costs and cut corners in manufacturing while jacking up prices is one of their most important means and also the exact reason why the basis of designer brands is undermined: handmade and high quality. The phrase “mass produced luxury goods” is self-contradictory itself. Take Louis Vuitton’s classic suitcase for example, which still adopts the manufacture method invented by Louis Vuitton in 1854: the frame uses lightweight solid African Okoume wood; onto the joints paste a piece of canvas which is not easy to be broken and help keep the suitcase’s surface smooth and flat; the protective coating of the corners is brass; the decoration on the edge called “Lozine” is made by condensing and steeping multi-layer paper and cloth in Zinc solution; for the suitcase’s lining, it is either cotton canvas in pearl grey named “Vuittonitte” or man-made suede with a piece of Khaki sew with the brand’s abbreviation LV. All the above mentioned processes are done by hand. And each year only 500 suitcases is made, while other products are finished in production line and mostly done by machines.
In LV’s courtyard house near Paris, there are twelve seamstresses working on hundreds of best selling handbags on a production line. “Excellent profit comes from…factory.” Arnault once explained, “…produce in organized manner to achieve amazing output.” But this manner is never disclosed, instead, the traditional handmade crafts of Louis Vuitton suitcase are publicized widely. When people spend a large sum of money on a handbag that came from the production line, they mistakenly think that they get the eternal tradition they long for. There are some other tricks: to cut the sleeve half an inch shorter (One employee said:”you will know how much you have saved when you’ve cut a thousand pieces.”); to leave garments with rough edges instead of sewing the hem; skip the lining under the reason that “women actually don’t need it” and etc.