The current widespread trend of buying luxury goods has become almost an obsession, a curious example of snob appeal.
This mania seems to have reached a point of absurdity.
It is difficult to comprehend the extent of the worldwide craze to buy luxury goods. To cite one example, according to a recent magazine article, two out of every five Japanese own a Louis Vuitton product, a French manufacturer of very expensive luggage.
From time immemorial warriors killed each other in part for war booty, but that involved few ordinary people; on the other hand in the 16th century Oliver Cromwell went around Britain and Ireland smashing stained glass windows in churches as he believed they were too ostentatious.
One of the earlier manifestations of luxury good fixations was ladies’ handbags. This columnist has a housekeeper whose mother lived in a poor neighborhood in Manila, yet she had her daughter buy a Coach purse costing hundreds of dollars. Logically, one would have assumed that it would be preferable to move to a better location.
According to an article in the The Economist, for some families in Vietnam, an impoverished, supposedly socialist nation, it is not unusual for couples to have their wedding pictures taken in front of a shop window of a store featuring luxury items that they hope to be able to afford later, instead of a church scene or a landscape.
Presumably some buyers of luxury goods believe that such items enhance their status. On Bloor Street in downtown Toronto it is pitiful to observe some shoppers purchasing very expensive clothes.
At times purchases from a store specializing in high-priced goods may be justified to ensure the quality. Few laymen can know the authentic value of a diamond, so a well-known store can serve some purpose.
In some places, such as Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue in New York women wear their clothes inside out so that the label is visible for all to see.
If one were not to pay huge sums for handbags or say, perfume, clearly there should be no poor people in the world as cash-rich consumers could alleviate poverty. It is unfortunate that too many have such a limited recognition of what life really is all about.
Thorsten Veblen, a well-known economist, wrote in 1899 that “Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a form of waste that arose to confer status on an essentially useless class.”