Deluxe, Dana Thomas
Deluxe, Dana Thomas
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Deluxe
How Luxury Lost Its Luster

Author: Dana Thomas

Narrator: Dana Thomas

Unabridged: 13 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/27/2019


Synopsis

Luxury was once was available only to the rarefied and aristocratic world of old money and royalty.It offered a history of tradition, superior quality, and a pampered buying experience. Today, however, luxury is simply a product packaged and sold by multibillion-dollar global corporations focused on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and, above all, profits.Award-winning journalist Dana Thomas digs deep into the dark side of the luxury industry to uncover all the secrets that Prada, Gucci, and Burberry don’t want customers to know. Deluxe is an uncompromising look behind the glossy façade that will enthrall anyone interested in fashion, finance, or culture.

About Dana Thomas

Dana Thomas is the author of Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes, Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, and the New York Times bestseller Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster. She began her career writing for the style section of the Washington Post, and for fifteen years she served as a cultural and fashion correspondent for Newsweek in Paris. She is a regular contributor to the New York Times Style section and has written for the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and Architectural Digest. In 1987, she received the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation’s Ellis Haller Award for Outstanding Achievement in Journalism. In 2016, the French Minister of Culture named her a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Joe

a good read. piles of research, interviews with the best of the luxury cast(e), investigative journalism, and fashion-magazine luxury brand wallowing-in. Ten Things I can now argue for/against: 1. Hermes bags, luggage, and scarves (for) 2. Chanel No. 5 (for) 3. fake handbags (against) 4. child labor, hum......more

Goodreads review by James

I should not have read Deluxe immediately after having read Richistan. I’m a huge fan of coupling two similar books, it’s like peanut butter and jelly, or whiskey and my mouth, but this combination was unintended or at least unconscious and these true tales of Excess and Image left me in a bizarre,......more

Goodreads review by Monica

The gist of the book is that luxury products are no longer luxurious because, in order to reap in profits, they have been cheapened so they can be marketed to middle income consumers instead of the high-rollers they used to exclusively cater to. Thomas does not really suggest what, if anything, is t......more

Goodreads review by Jason

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.) I confess, I know barely anything about the world of high fashion, and so of course especially know no......more

Well-researched and written, but I was hoping for more criticism of the industry itself, especially in regards to cost-cutting and the declining quality of these goods. I got the sense that as a fashion writer, the auther still holds these brands in such high regard to really see things with a clear......more


Quotes

“Dana Thomas has brilliantly dissected the fashion phenomenon while the healthy beast still thrives luxuriously on the operating table.” New York Post

“A crisp, witty social history that’s as entertaining as it is informative.”  New York Times