Allons-y!

ctantengco@theguidon.com

The luxury industry is a strange animal. Perhaps this is my middle-class background talking, but I’m always shocked at their prices: a Louis Vuitton jacket can cost P140,000, while a Hermès bag can cost P800,000.

This discomfort with the luxury industry, I believe, comes from the recognition that the cost of such items do not correspond to their worth. Luxury brands claim that their prices come from artisan labor. In the book Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster, Dana Thomas recounts how the handle of each Hermès bag takes nearly four hours to sculpt; however, she also shared exposés from industry insiders (who asked to remain anonymous) that luxury brands sell at a markup of thirteen times their production costs. Some even manufacture in China and blatantly lie that their products are made in Italy.

More importantly, though, I don’t understand how people lavish on things which really are just that: things. When a bag costs as much as a car—or even as much as the lower-end luxury bags, which go for “only” P50,000—it just doesn’t make sense.

My friend Pia Ranada’s senior Communication Thesis was a photo exhibit which contrasted the price of luxury items with that of the basic needs of a woman from a poor community. The disparity was appalling: a pair of earrings cost more than her food for a week. The worst part? She had to work to the bone just to be able to afford that food.

That’s what bothers me the most about luxury: its undertone of insensitivity. It’s easy to miss them; after all, buying yourself expensive things does not necessarily make others poorer. However, spending so much on what are, ultimately, frivolous items while others go without food or without education is like living with one’s eyes closed.

From the time we are young, we are told to aim for the good things in life. What most aren’t told, however, is when to stop.

The peculiar thing about being part of the middle class is you know quite concretely what it is to have and to have not. When I was ten, my mom and I took a trip to Baguio. We had little money, no credit card and due to a mix-up in the plans, nowhere to stay. The two of us trekked around the city until we found a P300-a-night inn. We spent our transportation money on strawberries and took 30-minute walks. It was the cheapest vacation of my life but also one of the most memorable. To this day, it reminds me that you don’t need a lot to be happy.

It isn’t wrong to want nice things and we all have our little luxuries—mine are milk tea and nice notebooks—but there comes a point when these nice things cease to simply improve the quality of life and instead enter the realm of blind, excessive pampering.

There are many perspectives one can take regarding luxury. Some take the “giving back” approach. Some refuse to patronize luxury goods even if they have the money, as a matter of principle. Some choose to spend on experiences rather than on items.

I flit between all of these and though I admit I cannot pin down the exact point where reasonable ends and excess begins, I think I’d rather err on the side of caution—where the bags are unbranded and living is within reason.