The Death of Luxury

Author Dana Thomas and the commodity of taste

By Nora Zelevansky
Published: Mar 28, 2008

As a child in Philadelphia, author Dana Thomas recalls driving with her father in his wealthy friend’s vintage Rolls Royce. The car’s opulence was impactful. She noted the lavish backseat with extraordinary wood paneling and buttery leather, as if the automobile was specifically designed for passengers. “It was sumptuous,” she muses. “And I thought, ‘Wow. This is the life.’ That was the first time I was knocked out by luxury.”

Thomas was always fascinated with posh New York-style—complete with butlers and grandiose Fifth Avenue apartments—depicted on sixties TV shows like Family Affair. “Such foreign concepts to a suburban kid,” she laughs. But, in the Rolls Royce, Thomas observed luxury firsthand. Wondering at the car’s beauty, she couldn’t have known that the very concept of luxury would soon be impossibly diluted.

In Thomas’ new book, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster, the Paris-based culture and fashion writer for Newsweek explores how capitalist priorities, unscrupulous mass manufacturing and the growing number of wealthy, not necessarily sophisticated, consumers is rendering old school luxury obsolete. After scouring the globe from manufacturing plants in China to high-end shopping experiences in Brazil, Thomas reveals that, although some last bastions of luxury exist, even some of the most respected brands have abandoned integrity in craftsmanship and familial pride in favor of the bottom line, birthing a middle market imposter of the real deal.

Since that simpler time in the Rolls Royce, Thomas has penetrated the fashion and luxury world from many angles. Although she rarely mentions it, from age eighteen to twenty-one, she modeled in Paris and Milan. She was memorably struck by one particular Parisian shoot for Italian Vogue, but Thomas was literally swathed in that moment’s ultimate luxury—haute couture collections from Ungaro to Dior to Yves Saint Laurent—on a daily basis.

Amidst all this glitter her fascination grew, but her personal taste remained uncomplicated. And that ability to absorb experience and surroundings without wholly adopting the prevailing values made her successful at her next endeavor, as a journalist for The Washington Post and eventually other most reputable publications like The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, The New York Times Magazine and, of course, Newsweek. “I've never been a big luxury fashion consumer: I'm a white t-shirt and jeans sort,” the award-winning journalist confides. “I think that has allowed me to cover the business more objectively: I rarely covet what I'm writing about.”

Certainly, it took objectivity and guts to write Deluxe, as many industry insiders might have happily suppressed her finds. As the book begins, Thomas and her husband visit Xi’an, China in April 2004. Wide-eyed at legitimate Louis Vuitton and Burberry garments sold on the street like souvenir tees, Thomas wonders at today’s definition of “luxury.” The word once implied an entire lifestyle, ripe with meticulous craftsmanship and impeccable service. Things have changed.