Deluxe

How Luxury Lost Its Luster

By: Dana Thomas

Narrated by: Dana Thomas

Once luxury was available only to the rarefied and aristocratic world of old money and royalty. It offered a history of tradition, superior quality, and a pampered buying experience. Today, however, luxury is simply a product packaged and sold by multibillion-dollar global corporations focused on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and, above all, profits.

Award-winning journalist Dana Thomas digs deep into the dark side of the luxury industry to uncover all the secrets that Prada, Gucci, and Burberry don’t want us to know. Deluxe is an uncompromising look behind the glossy façade that will enthrall anyone interested in fashion, finance, or culture.

©2007 Dana Thomas (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

High and low quality in the fashion industry

This book specifically has to do with the fashion industry, and if that is at all an interest to you, I would recommend this book. It is a history of why things have changed, for which she ultimately attributes to finances. What is specifically absent is information regarding luxury goods outside of fashion, although one can assume the examples the author gives can be extrapolated to a wide variety of goods. It would have also been nice to have consulted an economist, or financial expert to include their opinion on the topic.

Where the book struggles is the narration...anytime an author narrates their own book this is a red flag, and for good reason. Outside of autobiography's I almost wish Audible would ban authors from doing this. It would be akin to an author of a novel who has no acting experience demanding that they play the lead role in a movie adaption of their book instead of an A-list celebrity. Simply put, as an author you can't outperform a professional voice actor. Let them do what they're good at (voice acting), and you do what you're good at (writing the book). As for specifics, there are long gaps inbetween sentences that detract from the listening experience and break the immersion. If you try to increase the playback speed, she is hard to understand because it's not her rate of speech that is slow.

Interesting material, terrible narration

I largely enjoyed the material and the presentation of ideas. What I found extremely off-putting was the author's narration: stilted pauses in the middle of sentences, mispronounced words and garbled diction all greatly diminished my enjoyment of this audiobook.

Great information

A wonderful look in the world of disgusting fashion it gives everything I can to give you the best information you can possibly have

Insightful, enjoyable, tragic in some ways

I read this book when it first came out and really enjoyed it. Dana Thomas' insight into the luxury market (of which there is little authentic luxury left) is thorough and well-researched. On a recent road trip, I decided to download the audio version and 'read' it again. This book came out before the author's book "Fashionopolis" . . . another excellent book.

I enjoyed how the author organized the book and was sorry to see it come to an end. The only criticism I have is the author should have reconsidered being the narrator. Too many times she stopped in the middle of a sentence as though she was unsure what she was reading. Did she not prepare to read her own book? It just made the audiobook version come off as a bit amatuerish.

my favorite book

I absolutely loved this. out of the fifteen books I've read this year, this is my favorite. I'm currently living in Japan with my spouse for a few years and the Going Global chapter made me laugh because it gave the best description of a Japanese consumer. I have never seen so many LVs before living in Tokyo.

What’s the thesis here?

Narration is terrible. The book itself is interesting and informative, but the overall thesis is largely missing. Good info; didn’t tell me anything I couldn’t have figured out as a consumer.

Wow!!

Great read! Voice over was good, but mostly the book is entertaining and informative. if you are in the fashion industry in any form, this is must read.

Super interesting

This audio book was so very interesting and informative. It’s a little dated being from the early 2000s, but the general themes still apply. The narrator was painful - I’ve never used the speed up function before…even with it being at 1.1 some things were still painfully slow. She just did weird fandoms pauses..and for whatever reason could province all the names perfectly in French, but the Italian was rough sometimes. All in all, especially if you can move past the narrator, it’s totally worth it.

Fascinating look at the history of luxury brands

This book is not really up to date (I’m writing this in 2022), but it doesn’t really suffer for that, as the meat of it is the history and changes over time of various brands, the people who created and sold (and sold out), and the people who purchased and used (and stole and counterfeited)-all the big names and heavy hitters in the luxury business. Thomas is a good writer and I actually enjoyed it more as an audiobook than when I read it several years ago.

Thomas has a very pleasant, low voice and (to my untutored ear) does very well with the abundance of non-English names and words. There is an occasional…hesitation? in the reading, a pause here and there that’s just the teeniest bit too long, but it’s not really frequent and didn’t impact my enjoyment of the book.

All in all I highly recommend!

Great story

This was a very informative breakdown of the business and history of luxury fashion houses. The narration was not good but still well worth the listen.