Noises Off

People usually celebrate when businesses are good. When they aren’t,we pretend to have fun.

According to an estimate from international advisory firm Bain & Co,the luxury market is headed for its slowest growth since 2009. The sales of high fashion items-clothes,watches and leather accessories-have risen only 2 per cent,a fifth of last year’s growth rate. This is the weakest growth since luxury businesses began their decline four years ago. The report states that a slackened interest from Chinese buyers and the weakening Japanese yen are weighing the fashion business down. It also reports that Gucci sales fell in China over the last quarter. And that the USA has surpassed Asia as the industry’s biggest market. The new hot spots for luxury stores are Southeast Asia,Australia and even Africa.

This is especially bad news for India as our country is still waiting for more foreign investment in fashion retail. We’re still hoping more malls are built,more brands are made available and the industry gets the long-speculated leg up we’ve all been waiting for.

Much of this has to do with the severe expansion plans of storied fashion houses. In their unending desire to have more and more stores,much of the exclusivity in luxury is on the wane.

If something is easily available,is it still desirable? If everyone’s got the It-bag,is it still a must-have? The answer to both questions is an obvious no. Moreover,consumers are tiring of logos everywhere,even in China and Japan. High fashion should have never come to the high street. ‘Masstige’ is now a dead idea.

Since much of (western) fashion is run by corporates,the labels will only increase prices to bring in more money. But this will only yield short-term takings. Consumers will soon catch on they are paying less for history,heritage and handwork,and more for flashier future stores and a blitz of magazine advertisements.

A more definitive approach would be to allow the consumer to warm up to luxury. To create things of greater value but not necessarily higher prices. To provide superiority in quality and design instead of tiresome hagiographies. But where’s the growth rate in that? Neither can these goals be achieved in fashion’s currently fast-spinning cycle.

However the fashionista need not pretend to have a good time. The need of the hour is a slower and more enjoyable pace of things. This is when the quality and honesty of things supercedes their newness and advertising inundation. Fashion needs to go back to where it began from. As Tom Ford recently stated in an interview to the website Business of Fashion: “Name recognition is only as good as what you produce,just as a logo is only as valuable as what it’s on. So had I produced collections,which had not been well received,it would have been meaningless.”

Even though the highly quotable Coco Chanel said elegance was refusal in the last century,her words ring as true today. Great taste has always been about elimination. Poise,etiquette and class are back in fashion.

namratanow@gmail.com