BOOK
REVIEW Why brand obsession is the
new status quo The Cult of the Luxury
Brand by Radha Chadha and
Paul Husband
Reviewed by Kelly
Nuxoll
Thirty years ago, Chinese
businessmen were wearing Mao suits. Now their
suits are Armani. Ferragamo shoes are de
rigueur for South Korean women. Ninety-four
percent of Tokyo women in their 20s own a Louis
Vuitton. Of the US$80 billion luxury-brand
industry, more than half of sales come from Asian
consumers - despite the fact that purchases are
often out of proportion to
buyers' actual incomes.
In a surprisingly compelling read, Radha
Chadha and Paul Husband, a marketing expert and
retail-development consultant respectively, offer
a sociological interpretation of Asians' mania for
luxury brands: with old social hierarchies
collapsing, luxury brands indicate one's place in
the new pecking order.
Chadha and Husband
are primarily interested in the phenomenon, so
they can tell readers and, presumably, future
clients how to take advantage of it. The book
opens with an investigation into why luxury brands
became so popular in Japan, Hong Kong, mainland China,
South Korea, India and Southeast Asia. The bulk is
devoted to case studies of each country, teasing
out drivers among different markets. (Japanese are
compelled to fit in, for instance, whereas South
Koreans are socially competitive.)
The
final section looks at how companies can cultivate
consumers in Asia, inspiring what Chadha and
Husband call a "luxeplosion". The authors' own
fascination with their subject transforms what
might have been a marketing manual into a nuanced
sociological portrait of Asia in its first flush
of economic power.
At the center of the
desire for luxury is the question of identity: by
donning high-end Western clothes, Asian consumers
are literally trying on the costume of power. On
the one hand, these trappings point to the thrill
of having arrived; on the other, they suggest a
crisis of confidence. Many women turn to Western
designer clothes in part because they don't know
how to dress otherwise, the authors observe.
Not long out of the sari or the cheongsam,
women buy entire outfits copied straight from a
magazine, including bags and shoes, and store them
in their closets as ensembles so they don't forget
what goes together.
Clever marketing can
capitalize on the blank slate offered by many
Asian countries - especially mainland China, which
spent much of the 20th century cut off from the
rest of the world. "Play god and create your own
epidemic," Radha and Husband encourage. Among
other techniques, they suggest hiring people with
prominent social networks to invite their friends
to luxury goods parties, recruiting celebrities to
wear the brand, and wooing journalists to write
favorably about their products.
In effect,
the task is one of education - good marketers must
first introduce consumers to why their products
are valuable, and then create a curriculum of
desire. When luxury goods have moved from
exclusivity to must-haves to a way of life, then
marketing has triumphed and the cult has reached
is apotheosis.
It would be unfair to
suggest that marketing is the only reason for
luxury goods' success in Asia (although it has
done a damn fine job). As Radha and Husband
describe it, luxury goods are simply meeting a
desire that is already there. Especially in
countries that emphasize "face" and bringing honor
to the family, easy-to-recognize designer labels
are a welcome opportunity to flaunt wealth.
In addition, most Asian countries practice
"gifting", and luxury goods of obvious high value
flatter both the giver and the receiver. They are
particularly popular where governments are trying
to crack down on corruption, as a watch or wallet
is discreet and can be bought in cash. And because
they are so often part of political and business
transactions, luxury goods are as popular with men
as with women.
It would seem that everyone
- from bored housewives, to pampered mistresses,
to office ladies celebrating their independence,
to high-schoolers keeping up with trends, to young
executives seeking to impress, to captains of
industry enjoying the view from the top - has
reason to purchase luxury goods, leading Chadha
and Husband to extol the "democratization" of
luxe.
Yet in their exuberance, the
authors fail to consider seriously the destructive
side-effects of an addiction to high-end Western
brands. While they acknowledge many middle-class
Asians have not developed a savings habit, max
their credit cards (and, in some cases, commit
suicide over the debt), live with their parents
into adulthood rather than forgo a disposable
income, scrimp on food and necessities to afford
luxuries, get plastic surgery even at young ages
to keep up with an idealized image of beauty, and
engage in freelance prostitution to pay for the
season's new bag, Chadha and Husband dismiss
objections to the cult of luxury as moralizing.
They are particularly disdainful of South
Korea's failed campaign to discourage consumption
of Western luxury goods on the grounds that it is
anti-nationalistic, putting Koreans' hard-earned
cash right back into the coffers of foreign
businesses.
"Should luxury brands be
discouraged?" they write. "South Korea's
experience points to an emphatic no. You can't
stop human nature. New money will always display
its wealth."
Chadha and Husband reserve
their ire for the multimillion-dollar industry of
counterfeit luxury goods. This shadow market -
itself a testament to human nature and an
entrepreneurial spirit - is propelled by the same
motivations as the real luxury-goods market, with
wares at sometimes one-hundredth the price.
"People don't see buying a counterfeit products as
something illegal," the authors report
incredulously, lamenting the counterfeit
industry's lack of ethics - after all, it's
marketing that has done all the heavy lifting.
Yet even "genuine fakes", identical in
quality to the originals, cannot stop the
juggernaut of the luxury-goods industry. As Radhi
and Husband are happy to report, eventually
consumers will abandon the market stalls and enter
the flagships to purchase the real things. When
all is said and done, the experience of the stores
themselves may be the real key to the luxury
industry's success.
After years of doing
without, Asian shoppers are finding that the only
thing that feels nicer than a made-to-order
cashmere suit is entering a citadel of Western
culture, flashing one's Fendi wallet, and being
waited on by an attractive, deferential clerk.
The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside
Asia's Love Affair with Luxury by Radha Chadha
and Paul Husband. Nicholas Brealey International:
London, Boston (November 2006).
ISBN-10:1904838057. Price US$35, 320 pages.
Kelly Nuxoll has a master's
degree in creative non-fiction from Columbia
University and was the e-mail manager for Howard
Dean's 2004 US presidential campaign.
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mainland China,
South Korea, India and Southeast Asia. The bulk is
devoted to case studies of each country, teasing
out drivers among different markets. (Japanese are
compelled to fit in, for instance, whereas South
Koreans are socially competitive.) 
