Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster by Dana Thomas

I took a dive into non-fiction with this incredibly informative and witty book. If you don't buy into the whole luxury industry and their exorbitant pricing, this book will help to further justify your disdain for $2000+ handbags. If you happen to be into the whole luxury thing, this book will hopefully steer you in the direction of luxury companies that are worth your money as opposed to Louis Vuitton and the crap they try to sell you.

Thomas delves into a world of obscene wealth (consumers) and an industry born of true craftsmanship and elegance and mutated into greed and sweatshops. There are very few true luxury brands left that adhere to the principles of ultimate quality and integrity, such as Hermes. For me, this book was fascinating to discover how the industry is divided among conglomerates and which companies own certain brand names; my business nerd was in heaven.

Another fascinating point of the book was how societies of people buy-in to the image brand names provide - the shallowness of it all was astounding. There were many sections of the book dedicated solely to the Japanese and their buying habits. Often these brands will open stores in locations specifically targeted to the Japanese. For example, Hawaii has exploded with luxury shopping strips in the past 10 years due entirely to the high volume of Japanese tourism on the US islands. Japanese travel agencies have taken their cue and now offer travel primarily for shopping. There are weekend excursions to Hawaii from Japan that are two or three days long, have a shuttle from the airport in Hawaii to the luxury one-stop shopping, and back on the shuttle to catch your plane back home.

This book was a great lesson in marketing and the ability of something shiny to woo the masses and get them to dump all their money into a big vat of greed.