But every summer (apart from recent covid ones), whole planes come from Arabian gulf. Planes full of ferraris and lambos, so you suddenly see (and hear) a lot of arab plated cars in central europe. These people shop as you describe - come to ie Versace or Piguet shop because its just by the lake, spend ridiculous amount and go to next shop.
Basically these few weeks enable those shops to survive for rest of the year since rentals are crazy.
Probably not to just anything, because you have to remain high status. But perhaps host some fancy artists or so.
Essentially, if you have actual FU money, you're not spending time going to a shop to choose your own luggage. You probably don't even see your luggage. An assistant packs your stuff, a driver puts it on your plane, and a hotel worker unpacks it at the other end. Your luggage is probably some completely boring, utilitarian metal box designed to keep expensive stuff safe.
Some people _like_ shopping.
Similarly, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, liked to drive himself. He could have people drive him easily. And I must imagine, he probably liked the experience of test driving new cars and picking one that he liked. Even though his assistants probably knew exactly what his preferences in cars were and could have predicted accurately which one he'd end up choosing.
Two centuries ago Britain was already well through its Industrial Revolution. Its mass production went hand in hand with mass consumption.
What you describe was probably closer to true for eg Russia.
That scale went up from that, to vacations, to cars or houses, then up to really expensive things like private yachts and airplanes.
It's all relative to income; for whoever they were, a 10K purchase might represent about as much as their monthly income as a six pack of beer would be for me.
And their wealth was probably still only a fraction of what the super rich have.
Huh? Global wealth inequality has dropped dramatically in the last few decades.
What's important for luxury sales is not the gap between rich and poor, but that the rich are richer.
Also keep in mind that because so much of the wealth of the very rich is tied up in assets like shares, the wealth share of the very rich takes a (comparative) nose dive whenever the economy enters a recession. Their wealth and income drops dramatically more than that of your rank and file employee, or that of someone on government handouts.
Absolutely, the rich are still rich and the poor are still poor in a recession. but on paper the gap between, say, average and top 0.1% narrows.
And, obviously, recessions are bad for both poor and average people. But you wouldn't get that from looking at inequality.
Just another reason to focus on absolute numbers, instead of whether the Joneses have more.
Btw, why do you want to focus on where the gross money is, instead of what you can buy after taxes with your money? People don't eat money, usually.
From what I gather the factories in China that make the real thing will also make extra copies of the real thing, thus making it extremely hard to tell the difference.
The social element is maybe the most interesting, it's like a hobby for these ladies. What I've noticed through my life is there's always people who do some kind of cottage buying-and-selling on the side: friends who buy luxury watches, collectible cards, used cars, restoring old laptops. There's something universal about that instinct. Being socialites it makes sense they gather about this particular thing.
The Hermes bags are made in France, by leather artisans.
And yet ironically in the article,
> She echoed a number of women I spoke with who think authentic customers are the ones getting played. “These days, the reps just tend to be better made,” a Hamptons-based chief strategy officer tells me. “They last longer. There’s more attention to detail. You can tell that things have been done by hand.”
It used to be a big status symbol, but they've become more mainstream now. People will still look down on people using Android phones though.
related: Beats headphones are / were a status symbol, as are airpods. The kids want airpods. People want to be seen wearing airpods. People want to be seen.
You sure the women in the article don't think the same way about the bags? The price difference between a working Android phone and top of the line iPhone is around 10x as well.
Speculation: Then, in the end, this explains maybe 1/3 of the pricing, the next 1/3 is marketing (prime real estate in metropolises, extensive sponsoring, one store employee per customer, a doormen, ...) and finally some nice profit margin, looking at you LMVH.
They've clearly found the sweet spot in the overall profitability curve, somewhere in the six-figure range.
This is why second hands brikenbags go for so much. Because it's the only way to get one without having to go through the whole approval and wait list process.
There are plenty of costs involved in luxury goods, not all of them goes towards material.
What do the costs for “real” luxury bags even go to? Some of them apparently cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s enough for two artisan workers to collaborate on making a single bag a year, then rest in a comfortable lodge in the Swiss alps until they make a single bag next year.
I can understand luxury car prices, to an extent. There’s engineering and material prices that surely can’t be cheap. I can’t understand a piece of cow hide going for the same price.