LOOK at a woman today, any woman, and what do you see? Clothes that are more
or less anonymous. Shoes that are more or less anonymous.
And a handbag. It could be made of leather or canvas or nylon. It could be a
tiny clutch in her hand or a back-pack slung over her shoulder. Never mind
what’s in it. More than anything else today, the handbag tells the story of
a woman – her reality, her dreams. And thanks to luxury-brand marketing,
that handbag changes every few months, like the seasons, like her moods.
Since the late 1990s, handbags and other small leather goods have joined
perfume as “entrance products” to a luxury brand. They come in a wide range
of materials, from nylon to crocodile, and an abundant number of styles at
prices as low as $200 (£100).
Unlike perfume, handbags are visible on the body, and – like Air Jordans for
teenagers – give the wearer the chance to brandish the logo and publicly
declare her status or her aspiration. “[They] make your life more pleasant,
make you dream, give you confidence, and show your neighbours you are doing
well,” according to Karl Lagerfeld. “Everyone can afford a luxury handbag.”
Today, when you walk into a luxury-brand store anywhere in the world, you will
find yourself surrounded by handbags. They are the easiest luxury fashion
item to sell because they don’t require sizing or trying on: you look at it,
and if you like it, you buy it. Done. They are easier to create and produce
than perfumes, and the profit margin is astounding: for most luxury brands
the profit is between 10 and 12 times the cost to make the item. At Louis
Vuitton, it’s as much as 13 times.
Handbags are the engine that drives luxury brands today. According to annual
consumer surveys, the average American woman bought two new handbags a year
in 2000; by 2004, that number was more than four. At Vuitton’s immense
four-floor store in Tokyo, 40% of all sales are made in the first room,
which sells only monogram handbags, wallets and other small leather goods.
“With the bag . . . there are no left-overs because there are no sizes, unlike
shoes or clothes,” said fashion designer Miuccia Prada. “It’s easier to
choose a bag than a dress because you don’t have to face the age, the
weight, all the problems. And there is a kind of an obsession with bags.
It’s so easy to make money. The bag is the miracle of the company.”
In 2004, luxury brands sold $11.7 billion worth of handbags and other leather
accessories, and the segment is getting still stronger. While the luxury
market grew by 1.2% each year from 2001 to 2004, leather-goods sales
increased by 7.5% each year. A large share of those sales are “It” bags: the
latest hot designs that – thanks to luxury-brand advertising campaigns and
fashion-magazine articles – become the must-have of the season. Recent “It”
bags include the Louis Vuitton Murakami, with the signature monogram stamped
in rainbow tones on white leather, and the Gucci Flora, a pretty floral
print taken from a scarf originally designed by the house for Princess Grace
of Monaco in the 1960s.
Handbags have become so important in fashion today that an English journalist
wrote during London Fashion Week in 2006: “Everybody – everybody – is
talking about handbags with the intensity of cardinals appointing a new
pope.”
The “It” bag phenomenon is young – less than 20 years old – and has been
wholly created by the marketing wizards at luxury-brand companies. In the
early 1990s fashion magazines declared that if you couldn’t afford to change
your wardrobe each season, you could update your look with a new handbag.
And luxury brands have been pushing the message, and the product,
relentlessly. “It’s like you’ve gotta have it or you’ll die,” said Tom Ford,
the former Gucci designer.
Leather companies launched ready-to-wear lines to make the brands – and
therefore their handbags – sexier. Fashion companies pushed handbags to the
forefront of their offerings and made them the centrepiece of their
increasingly provocative advertising. Handbags became an intoxicating lure.
And women got hooked, some disturbingly so. There are Japanese girls who work
as prostitutes to earn money to buy Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermès bags.
In September 2005, victims of Hurricane Katrina used their Red Cross cards
to buy $800 bags at the Louis Vuitton boutique in Atlanta. Websites such as
Bagborroworsteal.com have cropped up for women to rent luxury and designer
handbags for a fashionably short time instead of buying them – that way,
they can change their bags more often.
In the world of luxury-brand handbags, as in cars and clothing, there is a
pyramid of quality: made-to-order down to mass-manufactured. The best – the
equivalent of a Rolls-Royce or Chanel couture suit – is a Hermès handbag.
Made of the finest leather and fabrics, sewn by hand, and with starting
prices of more than $6,000 and year-long waiting lists, Hermès handbags are
considered by many to be the last true luxury goods in the luxury fashion
industry. They have long been the bag of choice for those who can afford to
choose. Jackie Onassis was photographed so often with her Con-stance bag
slung over her shoulder that customers would ask Hermès sales staff for
“Jackie O’s bag”.
Maryvonne Pinault, wife of Gucci Group owner François Pinault, raised fashion
eyebrows when she attended the Paris womenswear shows in the autumn of 2001
not with a Gucci or a Saint Laurent, but with a large alligator Hermès
Birkin bag on her arm. Martha Stewart showed up at her insider-trading trial
in 2004 carrying a buttery brown Birkin and was taken to task by the press
for her indiscretion. Carrying into a jury trial “a bag that is surrounded
by such a thick cloud of wealth and privilege was ill-advised”, opined Robin
Givhan in The Washing-ton Post.
Today, buying a luxury-brand handbag is often an exercise in banality. You
walk into the shop past the chic-suited security guards, peruse what’s on
display, choose, pay, and walk out with your purchase. The shopping
experience may have been pleasant, but in the end it was no different from
going to Gap, except for the price. There is nothing unique about the
product: the brand has churned out thousands of them, absolutely identical.
Unless you place a special order to have something custom made – and that is
a very limited business, available at only a few companies – what you get is
a ready-to-carry bag.
Buying a Hermès handbag – or saddle, or luggage – on the other hand, is still
a true experience in luxury. Hermès boutiques do receive a few bags each
season to sell to customers who walk in – a bit like a good restaurant
always saving a table for a regular who drops in without a reservation. But
generally, if you want to buy a Hermès bag, you have to order it. The bags
on display in the store are just that: display models to show you the
options. You choose the material: cowhide, reptile, ostrich, or even canvas.
You choose the colour and the kind of hardware: silver, gold,
diamond-encrusted. And for the Kelly, you choose if the seams are on the
outside of the bag or turned in. And then you wait several months while it
is made to your specifications. When it arrives in the shop and you are
invited to pick it up, it is your bag. Another woman may have a navy blue
cowhide Kelly with gold hardware and turned-in seams, but that was her idea,
just as yours was yours.
Hermès handbags are the antithesis of an “It” bag: most of the designs have
been around for almost a century and are coveted not because they are in
fashion but because they never go out of fashion. They don’t bear
ostentatious logos; the bags themselves are sufficiently recog-nisable.
Hermès handbags convey old money and refinement – even if those who carry
them have neither. They are a discreet symbol of wealth and success.
In 2007, Hermès had 257 outlets around the world, in cosmopolitan shopping
districts, suburban shopping malls, five-star hotels, and international
air-ports. But the loveliest by far is the original flagship at 24 rue du
Faubourg Saint-Honoré, just steps off the Place de la Con-corde in
Paris. The two-floor store in the six-storey company headquarters is a
throwback to the late-19th-century emporium: heavy black iron-and-glass
doors, well-worn mosaic tile floors, highly polished oak sales counters
topped with glass display cases, deco-domed lighting. On the walls hang
beautiful 18th and 19th century equestrian prints and paintings. Among them
is a stunning 1727 portrait of King Louis XV astride a high-stepping steed,
one of three by Jean-Baptiste van Loo and Charles Parrocel. Another hangs in
the Louvre.
Walk in any time of day and the place is humming with activity. Chic
saleswomen dramatically unfurl silk scarf after silk scarf for clusters of
Japanese shoppers and elegant Parisiennes. Tailors take measurements for
suits, and millinery experts size up chapeaux to be worn at the next big
wedding or horse race. On the mezzanine, jewellers fit watches or help
select the perfect pair of cufflinks.
In the back, salesmen in the saddle department show off bridles, hacking
jackets, and saddles, which, like Hermès handbags, are made to order and by
hand. Hermès has made more than 43,000 saddles since it was founded in 1837.
To be measured for one, customers make their way up the back stairs to the
saddle atelier, where they straddle a leather sawhorse – just as clients
have for more than a century – as one of the company’s eight saddlemakers
gets to work.
That, in a snapshot, is what sets Hermès apart from its competitors in the
luxury business. As its 2004 autumn ad campaign declared: “Nothing changes,
but everything changes.”
© Dana Thomas 2007
Extracted from Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre, to be published by Allen
Lane on September 6 at £20. Available from The Sunday Times BooksFirst for
£18 (free p&p) 0870 1658585
ROYAL BEGINNINGS
LUXURY fashion was born in Europe’s royal courts – primarily those of France.
In the 17th century, French king Henri IV’s second wife, Marie de Medicis,
wore for the baptism of one of her children a gown embroidered with 32,000
pearls and 3,000 diamonds. Louis XIV dressed in satin suits with velvet
sashes and frilly blouses, high-heeled shoes or boots, and wigs of flowing
curls topped with ostrich-plumed chapeaux.
To maintain control over his courtiers, he dictated what they could wear, what
height necklines should be, and the length of gown trains. To please the
king, the ladies of the court wore wigs so tall that their servants stood on
ladders to assemble them.
Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV, personally encouraged and
supported the luxury artisans and helped to found the Sèvres porcelain
factory to provide the Château de Versailles with its services. Louis XVI’s
wife, Marie-Antoinette, overran her annual clothing budget of $3.6m by
buying gowns encrusted with sapphires, diamonds, silver and gold.
The attitude was summed up by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s finance
minister, who declared: “French fashions must be France’s answers to Spain’s
goldmines in Peru.”
