Truth Be Told

Chinese TikTokers claim your luxury products aren't luxury. Here's the real story.

Also in this issue:

• Mind-boggling results from the couture auction at Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr in Paris

• A remembrance of Mrs. Las Vegas, Elaine Wynn

Chinese Tiktokers.

For a week now, Tiktokers in China have been dropping videos showing how factories and workshops there churn out top quality luxury fashion items, like Hermès-style handbags, in comparable materials. They detail how little the production costs are, explaining how consumers are being ripped off by the major brands, and offering to sell luxury “dupes” directly from the suppliers at a fraction of the luxury retail price. You can watch some of the vids here, here, and here.

Which brings up a host of questions. Like:

1. Are they right?

2. Do luxury brands really make everything in France and Italy, as so many claim?

3. Does “Made in Italy” or “Made in France” actually confer quality?

These are all questions I’ve been addressing since my first book, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, was published in 2007. I’ll revisit them here today.

First: Are the TikTokers right?

Yes, they are absolutely right. For at least twenty years, major European luxury brands have been sending their artisans from France and Italy to China to teach local workers how to make their products at the same quality level, and now the factories have those systems and techniques down pat. Plus, these factories have access to many of the same suppliers for leather, hardware, materials as the luxury brands do. In fact, the suppliers are often in China. This is why production cost is a fraction of retail price—when I wrote Deluxe, the mark-up was 10 to 12 times production cost.

From Deluxe:

The evening after I visited the [legitimate handbag] factory in China, I met some friends for a drink at the bar at the new Harvey Nichols store in Hong Kong. As I entered the store from the Landmark luxury shopping mall in the heart of the Central business district, I passed through the handbag department. To my right, on the shelf, sat the exact same bag I saw the Chinese girls making in the factory. It cost the [European luxury] brand $120 to produce. It was for sale at Harvey Nick’s for $1,200.

Since then, I’ve heard the mark-up is 20 to 25 times—or more.

Thus why companies report such enormous profits.

Second, do luxury brands really make everything in France and Italy, as so many claim?

Of course not. As I wrote in my last Style Files newsletter, the supply chain is global, and fractured. Again, from Deluxe:

Today, the luxury brand handbag is a study in globalization: hardware, like locks, come from Italy and China (primarily Guangzhou); the zipper comes from Japan; the lining comes from Korea; the embroidery is done in Italy, India, or northern China; the leather is from Korea or Italy; and the bag is assembled partly in China and partly in Italy. The sourcing is sometimes as questionable as the true provenance of the bag: one manufacturer told me that one supplier claims his silk is British when in fact he buys it in China, stores it in the United Kingdom, and then sells it at European prices.

I visited the ISA silk factory in the Como region of Italy to see it in action:

Much of the twill ISA uses comes from China. “There are three or four companies there that only do plain twill, and it is cheaper because they never stop production and that’s all they do,” [ISA head] Gabriella [Bianchi] explained. “We buy twill from China when the quality doesn’t have to be perfect and the customer [meaning the brand] wants lower prices. For the first-quality level we still do all the weaving in Como. You can see when something is printed well or woven well. This is the power of Como.”

Scarves with machine-sewn edges are sent to a sewing room upstairs to be finished. Scarves with hand-rolled, hand-stitched edges are sent to freelancers in the region who work at home or to a factory that specializes in hand-rolled finishing in Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean just off Madagascar. Hermès has some of its silk scarves finished there, too. The Mauritius factory “has good prices and good quality,” Gabriella explained.

And this was in 2005. Imagine how such business practices have evolved and expanded since then.

Third, does “Made in Italy” or “Made in France” actually confer quality?

Oh, please. The idea that something made in Italy or France is superior to something made elsewhere is ridiculous, and, frankly, xenophobic.