Whether you agree or disagree with his conclusions, Sami Karam’s Populyst is always worth a read, and in a recent post he had an interesting response to an article by Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times on the enduring success of Europe’s luxury goods business.
Ganesh both disapproves and approves of this success, particularly in finding markets outside Europe. Aesthetically (and despite conceding that he is “no arbiter of taste”), he dislikes “the intrinsic ghastliness” of much of what manufacturers in this sector produce. For example:
Consider the Gucci Marmont Matelassé shoulder bag. It has two big “G”s on it in gold and — that being insufficient gold — a gold chain.
But:
There are lots of bad arguments against the booming European (in truth, Franco-Italian) luxury goods sector. No, it isn’t immoral. LVMH employs people and pays taxes. Nor does it matter that US tech is more “serious”. All economies have their specialisms, their comparative advantages. Is Europe meant to neglect its own until it builds a Silicon Riviera or whatever?
That seems a touch complacent to me. The sluggish performance of Europe’s economies compared with that of the U.S. may suggest that an economy may benefit more from high-tech innovation than a way with shoulder-bag design. Despite that, the EU’s default response to technological advance tends to be regulation rather than emulation. The dismal consequences of that, incidentally, are something worth remembering in the midst of the current AI panic, even if Senators Hawley and Blumenthal (a pairing that tells you everything) have not.
But back to Ganesh:
All these complaints [about ‘luxury’ goods] avoid the central issue: the intrinsic ghastliness of the products. And the ease with which Europe can foist them on extra-European markets. I don’t suggest that LVMH boss Bernard Arnault laughs at America and Asia behind his hands. But he must know that he can put out almost any trinket and find a paying audience. In his place, I would be drawling ideas into a Dictaphone at 3am, just to see what can be got away with. “Gilt phone charger . . . ivory kennel” . . .
As poor countries sprouted a commercial overclass, their mimicry took the form of consuming the “best” Old World brands. But it comes down to the same thing: self-doubt, at the national and cultural level. The luxury trade isn’t evil. But it is sad. There is something pathetic, in the original sense of the word, about a certain kind of global luxe living: marble floors, white furniture, champagne flutes, too-strong fragrances, restaurants with handbag stools. It is not the visual naffness. It is the imitation of an aesthetic that is held in ironic disdain in its home market. . . .
No, be honest, let go of embarrassment, and admit that Europe is playing a very remunerative joke on the world. More power to it. Here is the other geopolitical lesson of the luxe boom. Don’t write off the old continent. Tourism, luxury, football: nowhere enchants foreigners so profitably. The idea that Europe is a pleasure palace, not a wealth-making machine, assumes it can’t turn the one into the other on a lasting basis.
That, I suspect, is optimistic.
Karam, however, draws a different lesson from the success of this “joke”:
[Ganesh] claims that these buyers, who have increasingly originated in developing countries in recent years, are bumbling dupes, victims of their own post-colonial self-doubt and of “an undue but ingrained deference to Europe on certain questions of taste”. The author views the central issue as “the intrinsic ghastliness of the products” and speculates that Bernard Arnault . . .“can put out almost any trinket and find a paying audience.”
The words “ghastly” and “trinket” give away the weakness of the author’s argument. The obvious rebuttals are “ghastly in whose opinion?” and “trinket by what standard?”. The only valid opinion and standard in the case of a legal transaction are those of the supplier and purchaser. Others may disagree but they are bystanders with no skin in the game and cannot claim to know what is better for the transacting parties. Some people want and choose to buy luxury goods which they view as valuable. The reasons for that infatuation are irrelevant, regardless of the buyers’ nationalities or attitudes towards the West.
There is a larger point here that bears making. Orectic economies, based on want, have been far more successful than economies based on need. Need can be measured and collectivized, and can therefore be dictated and controlled. Want, like desire, is subjective, immeasurable and a marker of personal freedom. It evades control, or even reason in some cases. It is easy to say “who needs these baubles?” But the main point is that some people want them and that is enough.
Indeed.