I can’t afford to buy cheap things.
At the beginning of the 21st century, when established luxury brands fell into the hands of giant corporations with profit-hungry shareholders, this courtship of the mass market accelerated and intensified. Sunglasses, sneakers, scarves, belts and billfolds: lower-priced items put luxury tantalizingly within our reach. We found that we could enter the LV store on the Champs Ulysses, purchase a relatively affordable gift and be treated with only slightly less deference than the teenage princes.
If you have no dreams… people would ask why they get up in the morning. If you want only things you can afford, it’s boring. It is very ugly to think things shouldn’t exist because you cannot buy them.
It may well be that luxury is a basic human need — a way of winning something back against the cruelty of life.
Early man shared another of our basic urges, which is to dream. Dreams and longings provoke not only self-expression through art, but also the impulse to “single oneself out through ornamentation, make a mark through monuments, seduce others by acquiring or giving rare objects, and finally to better enjoy life by improving one’s food and surroundings. Voila le luxe.”
In other words, man has aspired to better things since he first glimpsed the stars.
Luxury is often associated with the realm of the senses: voluptuous images, tastes, orders and sensations. Indeed, sensuality is a key component of many luxury brands.
The head of sales and marketing at Bentley pointed this out after relating the history of the automotive brand. “The same narrative lies behind almost any luxury brand you care to examine. There’s always a hero. That hero needs to have struggled against great adversity. They rise nobly to the challenge. And today’s success is the ultimate realization of their dream.”
Paris was a city dependent on the financial support of the noble and rich to maintain its industries, which were in the main to do with luxury and semi-luxury goods. In a country where details of appearance, costume and presentation were “vital matters,” Marie Antoinette was an appropriate consort.
Fashion is merely a reflection of society. As long as there is a society, there will always be fashion.
I’ve found the key to hitting a good shot with a restricted backswing is to concentrate on creating more leverage by hinging the wrists earlier in the backswing. This produces additional power.
Courreges was the first to understand that haute couture drove the dream. The haute couture collection established the necessary premium image of the brand, which then rubbed off on the ready-to-wear line.
He discovered that the work of couture — solitary, constantly demanding perfection, immediately consumable — is, all things considered, less creative than that of ready-to-wear… which anticipates the desires of women by proposing, in advance, new styles. From the very first season, he outpaced couture with his brilliance, mastery and invention, imposing with ready-to-wear his vision of fashion on the entire world.
When I was 17, the design director at Nino Cerrutti, who was my first mentor, taught me that to be too much ahead is to be behind. The most important thing is to be right on time.