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  • Faust
    kitsch killer
    • Sep 2006
    • 37852

    NYT Article on Luxury manufactured in China.



    I was just rereading it. I am sure some of you read it, but thought I'd post it anyway. It's nothing that we don't know, but some knew facts are there.



    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/op...gewanted=print


    Made in China on the Sly











    Paris




    AMERICA?S holiday shopping season, which officially opens today, is
    expected to yield sales 4 percent higher than last year. This growth is
    not likely to be seen at discount stores; their customers are feeling
    the credit crunch. But a big increase is predicted in sales of
    luxury-brand products like Burberry handbags, Prada scarves and Gucci
    ties, with prices high enough to make a difference.




    Those prices are worth it, we are told, because these goods are
    handmade in Europe by artisans. In fact, that is not always the case ?
    as we learned from the recent news reports on the activities of Norman Hsu,
    the Democratic political fund-raiser indicted on charges of investment
    fraud. Mr. Hsu told potential clients that he would use their money to
    finance the manufacturing of Gucci and Prada items in China ? and
    promised a 40 percent return on the investment.




    This was surprising, given that both brands have long maintained
    that they do not produce their wares there. A Prada spokesman
    reiterated it when the Hsu news broke, telling Women?s Wear Daily that
    Prada does not manufacture its products in China ? though if you look
    inside one of Prada?s popular nylon toiletry cases, you?ll sometimes
    find a small tag that states otherwise.




    For more than a century, the luxury fashion business was made up of
    small family companies that produced beautiful items of the finest
    materials. It was a niche business for a niche clientele. But in the
    late 1980s, business tycoons began to buy up these companies and turn
    them into billion-dollar global brands producing millions of
    logo-covered items for the middle market. The executives labeled this
    rollout the ?democratization? of luxury, which is now a
    $157-billion-a-year industry.




    To help these newly titanic brands retain an air of old-world
    luxury, marketing executives played up the companies? heritage and
    claimed that the items were still made in Europe by hand ? like
    Geppetto hammering in his workshop by candlelight. But this sort of
    labor is wildly expensive, the executives routinely explain, which is
    why the retail prices for luxury goods keep going up and up.




    In fact, many luxury-brand items today are made on assembly lines in
    developing nations, where labor is vastly cheaper. I saw this firsthand
    when I visited a leather-goods factory in China, where women 18 to 26
    years old earn $120 a month sewing and gluing together luxury-brand
    leather handbags, knapsacks, wallets and toiletry cases. One bag I
    watched them put together ? for a brand whose owners insist is
    manufactured only in Italy ? cost $120 apiece to produce. That evening,
    I saw the same bag at a Hong Kong department store with a price tag of
    $1,200 ? a typical markup.




    How do the brands get away with this? Some hide the ?Made in China?
    label in the bottom of an inside pocket or stamped black on black on
    the back side of a tiny logo flap. Some bypass the ?provenance? laws
    requiring labels that tell where goods are produced by having 90
    percent of the bag, sweater, suit or shoes made in China and then
    attaching the final bits ? the handle, the buttons, the lifts ? in
    Italy, thus earning a ?Made in Italy? label. Or some simply replace the
    original label with one stating it was made in Western Europe.







    Not all luxury brands do the bait and switch. The chief executive of
    the French luxury brand Hermès readily told me that some of its silk
    scarves are hemmed by hand in Mauritius, where labor costs less. And
    Louis Vuitton, which boasts that it churns out its $3 billion worth of
    leather goods each year in its company-owned factories in France, Spain
    and Southern California, announced in September that it plans to build
    a factory in India to produce shoes.




    But most brands aren?t so straightforward. To please customers
    looking for the ?Made in Italy? label, several luxury companies now
    have their goods made in Italy by illegal Chinese laborers. Today, the
    Tuscan town of Prato, just outside of Florence and long the center for
    leather-goods production for brands like Gucci and Prada, has the
    second-largest population of Chinese in Europe, after Paris. More than
    half of the 4,200 factories in Prato are owned by Chinese
    entrepreneurs, some of whom pay their Chinese workers as little as two
    Euros ($3) an hour.




    Luxury brand executives who declare that their items can be made
    only in Western Europe because Western European artisans are the only
    people who know what true luxury is are being not only hypocritical but
    also xenophobic. They are not selling ?dreams,? as they like to
    suggest; they are hawking low-cost, high-profit items wrapped in logos.
    Consumers should keep in mind that luxury brands are capable of
    producing real quality at a reasonable price. They know better, and so
    should we.






    Dana Thomas, Newsweek?s European cultural correspondent, is the author of ?Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster.?










































    Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

    StyleZeitgeist Magazine
  • DHC
    Senior Member
    • Jul 2007
    • 2155

    #2
    Re: NYT Article on Luxury manufactured in China.

    [quote user="Faust"]


    To please customers
    looking for the ?Made in Italy? label, several luxury companies now
    have their goods made in Italy by illegal Chinese laborers. Today, the
    Tuscan town of Prato, just outside of Florence and long the center for
    leather-goods production for brands like Gucci and Prada, has the
    second-largest population of Chinese in Europe, after Paris. More than
    half of the 4,200 factories in Prato are owned by Chinese
    entrepreneurs, some of whom pay their Chinese workers as little as two
    Euros ($3) an hour.















    [/quote]



    Wow!! Uuuhh...wow! Didn't know of the exploitation of Chinese laborers in Europe. I guess it happens everywhere, but geez. Those poor people having to subsist on slave' wages in a country where the cost of living far outweighs their income....etc.etc.



    I hadn't read the article. Thanks for posting it.

    Originally posted by Faust
    fuck you, i don't have an attitude problem.

    Sartorialoft

    "She is very ninja, no?" ~Peter Jevnikar

    Comment

    • nqth
      Senior Member
      • Sep 2006
      • 350

      #3
      Re: NYT Article on Luxury manufactured in China.



      Not only Chinese! In Poland, people who are called "golden hands" are being paid a lot more than a lot of experienced officers in public institutions. People who work in cultural institutes are being paid even less. I don't even mention people who work in national health services. Just because those golden hands are going to work somewhere else (in UK for example) instead of staying in Poland.



      The minimum salary in Poland is like 300 euro a month, with tax and insurance included!



      This is devastating.



      2 euro an hour is like some of the worst jobs in security service (imagine 1-2 euros evening hours). How about a lot of people who work for free in fashion industry, assisting sb ...



      Not that it is ok for the so called luxury companies to pay that kind of money.

      Comment

      • Chinorlz
        Senior Member
        • Sep 2006
        • 6422

        #4
        Re: NYT Article on Luxury manufactured in China.



        I just wanted to say that I LOVE your blog.




        Absolutely a joy to read and (mostly) look at (since I can't read most of it hahaha).

        www.AlbertHuangMD.com - Digital Portfolio Of Projects & Designs

        Merz (5/22/09):"i'm a firm believer that the ultimate prevailing logic in design is 'does shit look sick as fuck' "

        Comment

        • nqth
          Senior Member
          • Sep 2006
          • 350

          #5
          Re: NYT Article on Luxury manufactured in China.



          Thank you:-) I have to update my blog soon:-)

          Comment

          • Avantster
            ¤¤¤
            • Sep 2006
            • 1983

            #6
            Re: NYT Article on Luxury manufactured in China.



            Thanks for sharing the article Faust, and nqth I also love your blog!



            Just a random thought here. If many luxury-brand items are made on assembly lines in developing nations, and many nouveaux riches of these developing nations purchase these same luxury-brand items, why do they do so?



            Are they (and many others) simply not aware of it, or is the draw of marketing that powerful?



            let us raise a toast to ancient cotton, rotten voile, gloomy silk, slick carf, decayed goat, inflamed ram, sooty nelton, stifling silk, lazy sheep, bone-dry broad & skinny baffalo.

            Comment

            • Faust
              kitsch killer
              • Sep 2006
              • 37852

              #7
              Re: NYT Article on Luxury manufactured in China.

              Avantster, I hear that spending ludicrous amounts of money is a powerful aphrodisiac.
              Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

              StyleZeitgeist Magazine

              Comment

              • Avantster
                ¤¤¤
                • Sep 2006
                • 1983

                #8
                Re: NYT Article on Luxury manufactured in China.



                Ah yes - I suppose if you're really that wealthy, spending ludicrous amounts of money to ensure your genetic succession isn't that much of a crime.. [79]




                let us raise a toast to ancient cotton, rotten voile, gloomy silk, slick carf, decayed goat, inflamed ram, sooty nelton, stifling silk, lazy sheep, bone-dry broad & skinny baffalo.

                Comment

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