In the Lap of Luxury, Paris Squirms

[All the best French places have signs at the entrance saying: "No Piggy's
or scRunge's allowed!"...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/fashion/15paris.html


January 15, 2009

In the Lap of Luxury, Paris Squirms

By ELAINE SCIOLINO
PARIS

"France is the birthplace of luxury fashion, and here the recession biting
the world has the feel of a morality play.

As high-end consumers everywhere have suddenly suppressed their appetite for
luxury goods, what was once considered a recession-proof industry has been
hit hard.

High-end stores in the United States watched in horror as holiday sales
tanked, while in Tokyo, Louis Vuitton canceled plans for what would have
been its largest and most glittery store anywhere.

For the French, each wave of bad news has brought high anxiety here.

When Chanel recently announced the layoff of 200 temporary employees - only
slightly more than 1 percent of its 16,000-member work force - the daily
newspaper Le Parisien called the news a bombshell.

The television channel LCI described the move as the most serious setback to
the company since Coco Chanel fired her entire staff and closed shop when
war broke out in 1939.

But there is also, paradoxically, an underlying satisfaction here that an
era of sometimes vulgar high living is over and that a more bedrock French
way of life will emerge.

Only in France is the recession lauded for posing a crisis in values.

A recent issue of Le Figaro Magazine featured a 12-page guide to scaled-down
living in 2009, with predictions that people will work less and put family
(even in-laws) first. A French trend expert quoted in the magazine
dramatically described the changes as nothing less than "a revolution in
values."

Alain Némarq, the chairman of Mauboussin, the prestige jewelry firm, noted
in an interview that saving the luxury industry should be an important
national priority because it employs 200,000 people in France, is part of
French heritage, brings prestige to the country and seduces not just the
"happy few" but a large swath of the public.

Rather than trying to keep the machine running by pumping out high-price
hand bags, watches and other goods, he proposed the unthinkable: the entire
luxury industry should slash prices. "We need a return to reason, decency,
discretion, beauty and creativity - in other words, to true values," Mr.
Némarq said. (Mauboussin has lead by example.

It has sold its one-carat diamond solitaire "Chance of Love" ring for about
$14,500, roughly a third less than its normal price, and its lower-end
0.15-carat diamond ring was priced at $895, Mr. Némarq said.)

Some French intellectuals want to go much further, calling for the death of
the entire luxury industry as a sort of national ritual of purification.

"Since the ancient Greeks, luxury goods have always been stamped with the
seal of immorality," said Gilles Lipovetsky, a sociologist who has written
several books about consumerism. "They represent waste, the superficial, the
inequality of wealth. They have no need to exist."

The political champion for the new economic morality is a recent convert:
President Nicolas Sarkozy, formerly known as "President Bling-Bling." He
entered office pledging to inject more Anglo-Saxon-style capitalism by
getting the French to "work more to earn more."

But last week in Paris, Mr. Sarkozy and the former British Prime Minister
Tony Blair hosted a conference of political leaders and Nobel Prize-winning
economists to find ways to instill moral values into the global economy. The
old financial order had been "perverted" by "amoral" and uncontrolled
capitalism, Mr. Sarkozy said, deploring the fact that, "the signs of wealth
count more than wealth itself."

He praised the "return of the state" as a regulator of capitalist excess.

Paradoxically, that sentiment may not be all that difficult for the French
to accept. France's national identity may seem wrapped up tight in the aura
of luxury - elegant dress, sophisticated perfume, good food and wine, and no
shortage of Champagne for the flimsiest of celebrations. But even though the
French more than most Europeans appreciate the finest quality they can
afford, they pride themselves on balance. France remains a deeply
conservative country, one in which it traditionally has been unacceptable to
show off material possessions. Most French use debit cards, not credit
cards, which means they tend not to spend more than they have in their bank
accounts. Getting a mortgage is a torturous process.

And so, many see in the closing of an era of free and easy spending on
luxury goods - when luxury became associated with flash and ostentation
around the world - the potential for a restoration of the classic French
virtues of restraint and modesty. Even a bit of suffering and sacrifice
might be in order.

"This whole crisis is like a big spring housecleaning - both moral and
physical," Karl Lagerfeld, the designer for Chanel, said in an interview.
"There is no creative evolution if you don't have dramatic moments like
this. Bling is over. Red carpety covered with rhinestones is out. I call it
'the new modesty.' "

Still, Mr. Lagerfeld is quick to point out that his house is doing just
fine, that the layoffs this month were blown out of proportion and that
Chanel's Paris-Moscow collection last month brought in 17 percent more in
sales than his Paris-London show in 2007.

In keeping with the new national mood - and in deference to hard economic
realities - the designer Nathalie Rykiel said she will show the new Sonia
Rykiel collection in March not with a grand theatrical spectacle for 1,500
people in a vast rented space, but with two small 200-guest mini-shows in
her boutique on the Boulevard St.-Germain.

"In the end it probably is not going to cost much less so this is not about
the money," she said over lunch at the Café de Flore. "It's a desire for
intimacy, to go back to values. We need to return to a smaller scale, one
that touches people. We will be saying, 'Come to my house. Look at and feel
the clothes.' "

Certainly, retrenchment was felt over the holiday season in Paris, where
caterers were hurt by cancellations of year-end cocktail parties. If there
were parties at all, there was more duck mousse and a lot less foie gras.
Champagne, the global wholesale sales of which dropped in October by 16.5
percent compared with the previous year, was served less at French tables;
fizzy French wine without the official Champagne appellation was served
more.

At La Grande Épicerie, the vast food hall in Le Bon Marché department store,
French and Italian caviar sold as well as the much more pricey Russian
variety; the pastry chefs resisted the temptation to bake 100 euro designer
Bûche de Noël cakes.

"Luxury products that have savoir faire - rather than bling-bling - offered
a sense of refuge," said Frédéric Verbrugghe, the food hall's director
general. "Sales of Dom Pérignon didn't suffer, but ostentatious packaging
didn't move. In the past, customers would buy an entire block of foie gras;
this year it was just five slices."

Many French executives take the long view that the economy will eventually
rebound. Some vintners recall that the French nobility stopped buying
Champagne during the country's revolution in 1789, forcing winemakers to
find markets abroad.

"We have been in business for 300 years," said Dominique Hériard Dubreuil,
chairman of the Rémy Cointreau Group, which produces Rémy Martin cognac and
Piper-Heidsieck Champagne. "We were hit by the phylloxera insect in the 19th
century that destroyed our vines and our capacity to produce. We have faced
two world wars. I see the crisis as a challenging but constructive event."

And for Mr. Lagerfeld, cutting back his own spending at Chanel is not part
of his "new modesty" strategy. He said he is not being forced by the private
company's owners to bend or adapt because of financial constraints. "We have
no budget, we do what we want and throwing money out the window brings money
back in through the front door," he said. "The bottom line is that I don't
deal with the bottom line. The luxury in my life is I never have to think
about it."

Maïa de la Baume and Basil Katz contributed reporting.

/

On 15/01/09 4:44, in article ,
"Gregory Morrow" wrote:

[All the best French places have signs at the entrance saying: "No Piggy's
or scRunge's allowed!"...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/fashion/15paris.html

It was in the Herald today.

What is true is that the rich are a bit more secretive about their
wealth in France that the USA. Very little socialogical work
has been done on this class in France, but one good book was
"Dans les beaux quartiers" par Michel Pinçon et Monique Pinçon-Charlot.

Basically people are less rich now. Paris of the 1800s had plenty
of servants living in the Chambre de bonne to serve the middle
and upper middle class. The rich in the country side in the 1920s
still had large residences, sometimes owning the town next to them
and having hundreds of people under their employ. Slave labor
provided by the working class went out of style in the 30s
and now it is difficult to get people. In the early 1980s
we dined at a elegant 7th arrondissement apartment of
a fellow scientist in the CNRS who was a member of the
nobility (his name told us that). The dining area was
next to a large window overlooking their private garden.
Still, they had no servant to serve dinner, my colleague's
wife had to rush back and forth to bring items from the
kitchen which probably were supplied by a caterer
ànd kept warm or reheated in the kitchen.

As Runge has harped on, we live in the 6th, the most
expensive arrondissement of Paris, and one does not
see the rich about us. The only hint of wealth is
the presence of filled restaurants and even those
have modest prices (100 euros total for two would
be standard).

For a taste of the very rich, go to the Place Vendome
and look at the people coming in and out of the Ritz.
Or going in and out of local jewelry stores Yes,
Paris still has its $1000 shoes and $500,000 pieces
of jewelery. The people who buy the are invisible
and may, for all I know, do their own wash in the
laundries.