HOW CHEAPNESS BECAME A LUXURY
- Jan Writer
- Oct 15, 2024
- 4 min read
Luxury is dead. It died the day it sold its soul to the bottom line, and now its rotting corpse is paraded around by brands selling overpriced crap in gold-stamped boxes.
But let’s be clear: luxury was once the stuff of artisans, painstaking craftsmanship, and bespoke artistry. You could argue it had some form of soul, or at least pretended to. A handmade leather bag once meant something—now, it’s a symbol of gullibility.
What’s that word? Pussies for profit.
The modern luxury industry is one giant charade, fooling even the “sophisticated” rich into thinking they’re investing in something of value. Luxury is marketed as an "investment."
Let me call bullshit on this.
The only thing most luxury goods invest in is the inflation of your ego—not your financial portfolio. That Hermes bag isn’t going to appreciate like an index fund, babe.
Fact is, luxury brands no longer thrive on scarcity. They thrive on mass production disguised as scarcity. A Chanel handbag isn't rare—it's manufactured in bulk by the very same corporate machine that pumps out fast fashion.
Yes, honey, your hundred thousand-peso handbag is probably stitched by the same underpaid hands in the same sweatshop as someone’s Docha & Cabanov or Abidas.
But it’s okay, they tell us. The wealthy keep feeding on the myth because a branded logo is their daily bread. It’s like how we mindlessly scroll through Instagram, convinced we’re “enjoying the moment” when we’re just fueling algorithms. Rich people? They’re the same—buying the illusion that wearing designer brands means something about who they are.
So let’s break this down. The lie goes like this: the rich buy luxury items as a way of investing in something timeless, something that will hold value. Except, no. According to research, most luxury goods depreciate almost immediately after purchase. Only a handful—truly a handful—of items have appreciated in value over time.
A 2021 study from Baghunter revealed that a staggering 90% of luxury handbags depreciate in value within the first year of purchase. The resale market? Not looking so good. Those Prada shoes you wore to last year’s party? Worth half what you paid for them the moment you left the store.
Buying luxury in the 21st century is like paying to participate in the most expensive pyramid scheme of self-delusion. You pay, others watch, and you climb, all while standing on a shaky foundation of trends, made-up status symbols, and idiotic notions about "value." The only thing that holds value in this setup is how many people get screwed. Congratulations, you're a part of the system.
By tricking the buyer into believing they have a stake in something elite, the industry makes billions of dollars. Meanwhile, your Prada suit loses half its resale value before you’ve even unboxed it. How’s that for an investment strategy?
Recently, the Chinese, once the kings of luxury consumption, are calling it quits. According to Bain & Company, China’s luxury market growth dropped sharply in 2023, a trend that luxury houses feared but did little to prevent. Why? Because the Chinese are realizing something very critical: there’s nothing exclusive about luxury if everyone’s buying it.
When a millionaire in Guangzhou has the same Louis Vuitton bag as a soccer mom in Ohio or a TikToker in Manila, you’ve got a problem.
That’s the death of elitism. And luxury lives and dies by elitism.
And if you think counterfeiting is a problem, here’s a little secret. Counterfeiting isn’t about stealing intellectual property. It’s about pissing in the face of the rich. And I’m here for it. Every fake Rolex on the street is a middle finger to the whole charade of luxury as something untouchable. If a logo is all that matters, why not get it for PHP 250 at a street vendor?
Remember when Andy Warhol printed the Campbell’s Soup can and turned it into art? That’s how counterfeiting works today. It spits in the face of capitalistic exclusivity by saying, “We don’t need your approval to wear ‘your’ status symbol.”
Luxury today is not the artistry it once claimed to be. It’s a cheap trick designed to keep the wealthy spending and the rest of us longing. The so-called “investment” in luxury is no more reliable than betting on a rigged slot machine.
Let’s end with a quote from Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (because I may not be “luxurious”, but I’m pretentious), written over a century ago but still rings true: “Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.”
His point? Buying luxury isn't about the thing you buy. It’s about showing off that you can buy it.
That’s why luxury today is cheap. It’s nothing but an illusion sold at full price to those who should know better.
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