Good article. I had always suspected that the European luxury fashion brands are priced more for their brand than their material. I've had a chat with an Italian guy about this. He told me that an average fashion student in Italy could recreated those fine leather products from LVMH for a fraction of the cost. He also said that those big Italian fashion brands have much bigger outlets in Asia than back at home. So their target market is actually abroad, not at home. In our Asian societies, these luxury items are more important as status symbols, than the actual products.
I have 2 funny examples:
I had a friend who bought an LV T-shirt to join a clique of people. That T-shirt costed him more than 10x the price of an average-branded t-shirt. Yet it's little more than a heat-pressed T-shirt. He had to use a credit card to buy that thing, as it costs him as much as his monthly wage. But it was worth it for him. He found his future wife from that clique of people. Whatever we want to say about that, that is his life, and he looks happy, as far as I'm concerned.
I had another friend who upgraded from a Lexus to a Lamborghini. He is no average dude, but he can barely afford that car. No doubt that the Lamborghini vastly outclasses the Lexus on paper. But maintaining and fueling that Lamborghini also vastly outclasses the Lexus. That Lamborghini ended up being a garage queen. And when my friend took it for a spin, he never drives above 100km/h. So it kinda defeats the purpose of owning that kinda car. He had to get another Suzuki to become his everyday car. But then again, that Lamborghini elevated his social status. He can now enter places and join cliques that he couldn't before.
I grew up admiring and aspiring to own some of these European luxury stuff. But now that I've heard from people who have reached there, the picture is not that rosy after all. This dream that the West sells to us, about buying their nice cars, nice house, nice clothes, etc. I think it misdirects alot of society to pursue these things for little reason other than status. While at the same time, the Western luxury businesses make huge money out of them. They won't care if you took a loan to buy them, bought it with clean cash or with dirty cash. It is not wrong to buy and own luxury stuff from the West, but I think our Asian societies should moderate our obsession with them. People can buy and enjoy them as they are, but these things should not become a social status for them. People have taken loans, cheat, steal, and sometimes murdered to get these luxury goods.