The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia's Love Affair With Luxury [ハードカバー]

This book is one-of-a-kind in the industry, studying the luxury shopping habits of Asians by analyzing their past present and futures. It's chock full of well researched luxury facts and figures essential for people working in the luxury industry. For luxury enthusiasts, the book has a wonderfully witty and wicked sense of humour that keeps one's reading fast paced and lively.

Highly recommended.

While it poses as research, the book is nothing more than an extended advertisement for luxury brands. The writing is nauseating as the authors gush with empty cliché after cliché. The book contradicts itself at numerous turns, is inaccurate, makes unsupported gross generalizations, and consistently offends.

The book is racist, particularly towards the Chinese. In one passage Chinese customers are likened to a classless prostitute: "it's like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, on Rodeo Drive with a stash of cash. How do you serve a constant flow of mainland Julias without upsetting local customers (p113)." They are sexist as well, repeatedly insinuating that the majority of women buying luxury items are using someone else's money. They note that some women are happily compensated for their husband's affairs by being able to shop and some view their marriage like a financial transaction that presumably fulfills them with the purchase of luxury goods. For these wealthy wives, secondary wives, and mistresses, luxury consumption is important because the longer women can stay pretty through these extravagant purchases, the longer they will be able to "hang on to their man" (124) or get them back if they have lost them. Additionally, in numerous places in the book they note how girls in Asia all desire rich husbands so that they can buy luxury items. And, even within the very small space given to employed, professional women, the authors that these women are high maintenance, thus even working women aren't independent but are destined to be maintained. Finally, and even more shockingly, the authors imply that it is more worthwhile for unmarried women to spend money on luxury goods than having money be "sucked away into childcare and mortgages" (56).

Of course, they are classist as well. They note of rich Hong Kong wives, the better customers are those who "have had plenty of time to refine their senses on Daddy's money, and are well-traveled, overseas-educated, sophisticated women who set their own standards (122-23)." Further, they consistently label those that can afford luxury goods as educated consumers, savvy individuals, and significant people in the world. In one passage, they tacitly approve of a group of Hongkongese that were able to get drivers, maids and valets to line up to buy luxury goods. It seemed as if the authors applauded these wealthy consumers for educating their servers in the benefits of luxury shopping.

The writers are astoundingly irresponsible. In one paragraph they can talk about schoolgirls sleeping with older men to buy a purse, full-time prostitutes wanting the same, people going into so much debt they commit suicide and office ladies skimping on their food budgets to purchase these items. In the next paragraph they can fluidly continue to promote luxury sales, without a thought to the consequences they just outlined. Additionally, they note that it is very important in Asian cultures to own luxury items as they are the cornerstone of self-esteem. They shockingly suggest that it is a positive thing for individuals to base their sense of self on the goods they own, the only problem is that some individuals just don't have the means or education about luxury brands to do so currently. Thus, parents that protest when their teenagers want to buy $500 purses just don't understand. Rather than an argument for promoting more modest consumption they are essentially saying that despite the tragic consequences of desiring such expensive goods, it is just part of Asian culture, it is simply the means by which self-esteem is accrued and thus there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

They seem to see luxury goods as a human right, and any nation that doesn't foster this trend is depriving its citizens. In one quote: "as India's economy develops, the next stages are inevitable and the cult [of desire for luxury goods] is destined to spread. It would be worthwhile for India to get ready for this, by for example, building high-end retail infrastructure, which the country sorely lacks" (47). I can think of a few infrastructural projects that India sorely lacks, and I can assure you that a Gucci store is not on my list. Of Taiwan; "luxury goods have become the great social leveler, and observers talk about the democratization of the market as though a designer logo is every status-conscious citizen's right" (130). Further in this vein, they agree with a theorist that finds that luxury consumption promotes unity and peace, citing that in Hong Kong people all share "the obsession with money and materialism to the exclusion of all else (117)." This is possible because Hongkongese don't have a strong cultural background; "like a good Chinese mistress, Hong Kong has given her body to Britain and now China, but neither of them decisively owns her heart or soul (118)." Why fight if everyone can have nice things? Hongkongese, like a good prostitute, give their body away but save their real love for money, and thus, there is peace.

Though they recognize that some might see "luxe gluttony" as "one of the seven sins" you also might view it as "a twenty-first-century virtue essential for the health of the economy" (104). Hmm, I wonder where they fall. They never interrogate the inequalities that make such expensive purchases possible for the few. They never interrogate who makes these goods or how their conditions of employment might not appear so harmonious. They never even mention the fact that high end brands are at the forefront of presenting unrealistic body images for women and men, and that this in itself is a huge reason for pause. And, as noted above, they mention but do not interrogate the problems with the widespread use of luxury goods as a primary provider of self-esteem and identity. This book is a careless, thoughtless piece of work by individuals who shamelessly promote consumption for the wealthy regardless of the costs.

Chadha and Husband get right under the skin of the phenomenon that has resulted in Asia accounting for over half of the world's US$80 billion annual spend on luxury brands.

It's a very accessible read and essential for anyone who wants to understand what drives Asian consumers.