Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster Read Online Free PDF

inspiration, though it is believed that the blossoms came from the Japonisme movement of the late nineteenth century. What is certain today is that the Japanese adore the Vuitton monogram. By the end of 2006 , 40 percent of all Japanese owned a Vuitton product, primarily from the monogram line.
    By the end of the nineteenth century, monarchy around the world was giving way, through social or bloody revolution, to more equitable—or democratic—societies, and the Industrial Revolution made inventors and entrepreneurs as rich as kings. This allowed the increasingly wealthy bourgeoisie to share the lifestyle and tastes of the aristocracy—and they did, wholeheartedly. As American economist Thorstein Veblen argued in his famous treatise The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899 , spending became the way people established their social position in an affluent society. American Industrial Revolution families such as the Carnegies, Fords, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Guggenheims, Pierpont Morgans, and Hearsts showed their social might by building gargantuan homes filled with uniformed staff and European antiques, underwriting public institutions such as libraries and universities, and buying gobs of luxury goods. In Europe, most reigning monarchy had been abolished, but not the aspiration to emulate it. Aristocrats continued to live grandly, as before, and a new bourgeoisie spent liberally to acquire all the same trappings, from fully staffed manor houses to complete sets of Vuitton luggage.
    To keep up with the demand at Vuitton, Georges added another two rows of workshops in Asnières. He opened a shop in Nice—(a favorite winter destination on the French Riviera for wealthy English, Russians, and Americans)—moved the Paris store from the Opéra district to the far-wealthier Champs-Élysées, and negotiated distribution deals in the United States. Soon Vuitton became the luggage of choice for such Hollywood stars as Mary Pickford, Marlene Dietrich, Lillian Gish, Ginger Rogers, and Cary Grant. Among the star pieces in the Vuitton museum collection is actor Douglas Fairbanks’s smart Roma suitcase from 1925 , covered with natural cowhide and lined with pigskin.
    It was a glamorous time, perhaps the last true golden period for luxury, and you can feel the gaiety and refinement in the Vuitton collection in such items as singer Marthe Chenal’s crocodile toiletry case with tortoiseshell-handled grooming utensils; crystal flasks with gold stoppers; and the ever-popular drawstring Noé bag, designed in 1932 to hold five bottles of champagne—four upright and a fifth upside-down in the center. “In those days, fully furnished houses meant fully stocked households,” wrote Maria Riva in Marlene Dietrich: By Her Daughter, of a home Dietrich rented in Los Angeles in 1930 . “Our inventory lists never had fewer than eight complete dinner services for fifty, six separate lunch and tea services, all of bone china, dozens and dozens of crystal goblets, and linen enough to stock Buckingham palace. This house also boasted fourteen-karat gold cutlery; the sterling silver was for lunch.”
    In the 1920 s, France’s luxury fashion business was composed of an astounding three hundred thousand workers, including cutters, fitters, seamstresses, embroiderers, furriers, shoemakers, weavers, spinners, and milliners. In five years in the 1920 s, the esteemed embroiderer Albert Lesage turned out fifteen hundred elaborate pieces for the Paris couture house Vionnet. In the 1930 s, Lesage used hand-blown Murano glass to make flowers to decorate dresses, and couturier Elsa Schiaparelli flecked her gowns with semiprecious jewels set in gold. At Chanel, the atelier turned out hundreds of glittering gowns for the smart set. Diana Vreeland remembered ordering one: “The huge skirt was of silver lamé, quilted in pearls, which gave it a marvelous weight; then the bolero was lace entirely encrusted with pearls and diamanté ; then underneath the bolero was