In order to make luxury “accessible,” tycoons have stripped away all that has made it special.” And though that may sound like some vindictive, polemical, rabble-rousing, Thomas can’ sustain her vitriol throughout the entire book. To achieve this, it has sacrificed its integrity, undermined its products, tarnished its history, and hoodwinked its consumers. It has realigned our economic class system. As she explains in her introduction, “The luxury industry has changed the way people dress. Though Dana Thomas certainly wouldn’t agree and spends 346 pages disagreeing.

It’s about luxury losing its faint glean of pretension. But contrary to the alliterate subtitle, Deluxe isn’t about Luxury Losing Its Luster. Throw in some ruthless business tactics and aggressive marketing and you have sewn a gown of change. More wealth and money in America has meant more shopping and buying. If there ever was a pair of prissy Siamese twins sashaying around America on their yachts clutching Hermes handbags like vultures to a carcass, it is Deluxe and Richistan. I’m a huge fan of coupling two similar books, it’s like peanut butter and jelly, or whiskey and my mouth, but this combination was unintended or at least unconscious and these true tales of Excess and Image left me in a bizarre, contradictory paradox of feeling both rich and poor.

I should not have read Deluxe immediately after having read Richistan. I guess the book is a fairly interesting study in prejudice, but as an argument it fails miserably. The only conclusion I can possibly draw from Thomas's objection to this is that she is enormously classist, and insulated to the point of not even realizing that her position is classist. In the meantime, the super-rich still buy quality custom couture like they always have. What I saw was that the companies are wealthier while fashion is cheaper and enormously more widely available. What I wanted to know was, why should I care what the rich do now, or ever did? Thomas's entire thesis seems to be 'luxury companies have gone mass-market, thereby doing some damage to someone somewhere.' I waded through 346 pages of earnings, percentages, and ridiculous name-dropping and pretension, waiting for the problem. 'So here's what I want to know: What do the rich do now?' 'I see where you're going with this: luxury companies have gone mass and along the way forgotten their original mission, which was to provide the rich with truly exceptional products.' Very near the end of the book, Thomas sums up her book through the eyes of a friend.

Deluxe how luxury lost its luster