LVMH straps on another bauble
The soulless conglomerate that finally swallowed Château d'Yquem in a ferociously aggressive destruction of its founding family, has just scarfed itself up a luridly gaudy bangle in Bulgari, we are informed. Readers, inured by now to Karl Lagerfeld's grotesque campaigns for Dom Pérignon, LVMH's most debauched brand, can be heartened that at last he'll have a client who deserves him. But the bloated python's 20 percent position in Hermès is very foreboding news for horses of the slightest thoroughbred descent, particularly given its ominous vow of "patience while the family sells out."
A vulgar, seething holding company, laying siege to one of the last, little treasuries of sweet indulgence on the globe, is not likely to galvanise the fashion-blogging community to lift a finger, except to test the wind. But with those to whom price is distin-guishable from quality, I pray for a mongoose to referee that vigil.
Attaché, Estate of Jean Cocteau
Photo Terestchenko
It would be horrendous if Hermes was to be swallowed up by this Medusa of luxury brands, which has now become so common.
ReplyDeleteTheir method is quite crude but predatorily impeccable. You're right to use the ugliest of all terms that could be applied to a trusted purveyor of your requisites - "brand" - as they reduce it to a stigma. Is there a single buyout specialist out there, who would pay to own what they've done to Moët? But Hermès is different because there isn't another; and one can well appreciate how this angers them.
ReplyDeleteit seems as with everything (and on a given day-as you well know, I might say the opposite) it will go the way of LVMH. Witness its wonder boy Galliano, scooped up just out of Central Saint Martin over 25 years ago to produce- genius and a nervous breakdown, LVMH could not wait to drop him and declare austerity at Christian Dior. Imagine being raised by that beast. Some say that fashion haute couture is dead-possibly, but the Beast will go on til nothing worth having is unplundered.
ReplyDeleteI have very great respect for these remarks and still an urgent prayer that the Dumas family can repel the thugs. It isn't right, perhaps, to treasure sweet invention in 'such things' but, still, as long as silk or calf are going to happen, anyway .. As to the name, Dior, I retain the naïve and unlearned hope that it rings with such remembered radiance as to raise a Counter-Reformation in young designers to this day. Meanwhile, the 2000 vintage of Dom Pérignon stinks of gardenias, and there is nobody who can tell us these effects are a coincidence of Chardonnay.
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