Janus Thinking

Recently I came across a fascinating article in the New York Times archive from 1912: “The Etiquette of Jewels: The Woman Who Takes Care Not to Wear Them for Mere Garish Display Can Add Much to Her Appearance.” It describes how diamonds and other jewels can enhance a woman’s “natural loveliness.”

It’s interesting to observe the rather ham-handed way that women are portrayed in the article by today’s standards. While the author makes a point that it’s important to pay attention to proportion and harmony when choosing jewels, he also notes how women should be acutely aware of their imperfections, rather than comfortable with their natural beauty “for where a woman fails to mentally admit her own shortcomings, she is more apt to emphasize them to others.” She instead needs “the calm calculation of a soldier planning a battle, thus intelligently facing the difficulties to be dealt with.”

Women need to wear not necessarily what they like and what gives them the most pleasure, but rather items that are the “most correct” for, and I quote, “her height, the contour of her face, her age, (or rather, to express it in the modern phrasing, her dignity,) the definite proportion of each feature, and her hands and arms.” The article goes on to describe which stones go best with which complexions and hair colors (because heaven forbid, you wouldn’t want to produce “an unpleasing, gypsy likeness.”

While this advice is questionable at best, there is one bit at the end that rings true to me:

The appeal of jewels, however much may be said to the contrary, is not a woman’s vanity, but to her love of the beautiful.

Women must choose diamonds and other jewelry that they interpret as truly beautiful, diamonds that makes them feel alive and truly unique. There is no automatic process to determine the “most correct” diamond for someone; beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The Hermes Birkin is one of the world’s most coveted handbags, with a two year waiting list and the devotion of many celebrities (have a look at this Google image search to see a few). By having a well-crafted product and attentive customer service, Hermes has found a way to keep prospective buyers interested and willing to wait for the bag they want. But this carefully maintained demand is at risk of evaporating if enough luxury-minded consumers read Michael Tonello’s new book Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World’s Most Coveted Handbag, out later this month.

In an interview with Reuters, Tonello exposed Hermes’s big secret: the two year waiting list doesn’t apply to Hermes’s best customers. He said:

I would go into a store with a list in my Hermes Ulysse notebook and pile up scarves, shawls, bracelets, worth about $2,000. This made me seem a regular Hermes client. Once I had that pile ready to buy at the last moment I’d ask for a Birkin and they would usually produce one of the back room. In 2005 I bought 130 Birkins in a three-month period — and you tell me there is a waiting list?

If Tonello is telling the truth (and there’s little reason to believe he isn’t—he says he has receipts to back up his story), he’s revealing some interesting things about Hermes—that the two year waiting list is an illusion, maintained to keep an air of exclusivity (and it seems to be working) and that Hermes made it a priority to keep their absolute best customers satisfied by giving them Birkins if they asked for them. They can’t have it both ways—it makes business sense to keep those willing to spend the most happiest, but Hermes benefit most in the long term by not giving preferential treatment to some customers.

[photo by yri]

The connoisseurship of water is a topic that’s reared its head before on Janus Thinking, and today I mention it again after spotting this article on ForbesTraveler.com, about the state of the pricey water market.

Michael Mascha, a water connoisseur and author of Fine Waters, believes that bottled water is the next wine, and like wine, it has terroir, a sense of place. He says that waters have a different taste and “mouthfeel,” and though bottled water has become a commodity, it’s actually shifting back towards being “considered a natural product with its own origin.”

On the question of where the best water in the world comes from:

That would be akin to asking where the best wine is coming from. That’s the beauty of what I am talking about… We can have many different waters with many different flavors with many different aspects, and we should really enjoy the differences and the variety and not look for just the best water.

Mascha approaches water like a true connoisseur; I’m still not entirely sure that water is something worthy of connoisseurship (because you can’t tell its provenance solely by tasting it, and it’s freely available at taps everywhere), but I appreciate the attention to detail with which he examines it and the pleasure he obviously gets from it.

Brioni, Rolls-Royce and Stella McCartney are among the luxury brands pondering or already operating stores in India, where spending on luxury goods is expected to grow from $4 billion this year to $30 billion by 2015. India now has 54 dollar billionaires, gaining 19 in the past year. Of course these and other luxury companies are seizing a growing opportunity, but should the major disparity of wealth in India (three quarters of Indians survive on 50 cents a day) give us pause? As we’ve seen before on Janus Thinking, acting in a socially responsible manner can help luxury companies grow their markets. Those companies going in to India would be wise to understand the full impact of their entry.

[Photo by Ooodit]

Photo by S Baker

While many luxury brands are plastering their logos in more places, fashion house Bottega Veneta continues to offer logo-free designs that are marked by quality, not flash.

This profile of Tomas Maier, Bottega Veneta’s head designer, in the New York Times today provides a great example of how companies can go after a small market of ‘in the know’ quality seekers and be very successful.

Maier doesn’t offer three different sizes of a bag at different price points; he believes that one bag, if it’s of high enough quality, should be good enough. Bottega Veneta uses fabrics and leather of the highest quality and pays attention to details that other clothing and handbag makers might ignore or overlook. From the article:

While other designers were producing dart-free baby-doll dresses as if they were so many Fords, he concentrated on deceptively simple, painstakingly constructed styles priced from about $1,200 to $6,000 for an evening dress. The dressmaker touches — ruching, serpentine seaming, hand-beading and elaborate pleats — are recognizable to a small but informed clientele.

This sort of attention to detail allows people to appreciate luxury in a subtle, more demure way, which could be appealing given the current state of the economy. Said Milton Pedraza of the Luxury Institute:

[Affluent consumers] don’t want to be screaming luxury right now. They don’t want something flashy that everybody else has. They are looking for unique handcrafted things that can’t immediately be reinterpreted at every level of the marketplace.

Read the full article here.