luxury shame

Oh! To cry out in Luxury Shame!
Instead of the beach, sun and sea, Juicy Couture’s President Edgar Hubert chose a Christmas staycation for his family. He told Reuters that instead of sun-baking in Jamaica,  ”We stayed here in New York over Christmas.” The reason: “I just thought it was not reasonable to spend so much money [to] go somewhere.”

Recession Crunch? No champagne? just drink from the perfume bottle then.

A bunch of bigshot execs at the recent Reuters Global Luxury and Retail Summit echoed the same lux-shame sentiments.

If the state of  our economy’s health lies in where women splurge on  jewellery and the men “invest” in watches, its poor health is telling even in the upper echleons. Saks Chief Executive, Steve Sadove, has stopped treating himself to one nice watch a year. Estee Lauder Cos Inc’s CEO William Lauder flies budget airlines now because: “Quite honestly, an US$89 ticket is pretty damn good against a US$500 ticket.”

The full article here is a juicy read, and quite plainly a clever PR move for the brands. The CEOs’ message: “we are feeling the luxury shame”, and to the guys on the street, “we are in it with you.”

Not buying a $10,000 watch is a sign of  feeling the pinch? Big deal.
Is this a sign of reawakening wallet conscience? A lifestyle rethink? A re-examination of spending values? Or could it be something very pragmatic: shrinking bonuses? Or are the bigwigs really spending it elsewhere, albeit more discreetly? A Christmas staycation with bigger, (but subtle) more expensive Christmas gifts, maybe?
And quite honestly, it is obvious that in these trying times, flaunting one’s wealth is simply uncool (especially so when one is the least affected by the downturn).

In case you were wondering: Luxury Shame, a term coined by Newsweek last year, described as  “the feeling a wealthy person unaffected by the recession has for still being able to buy whatever the hell they want while most of the world is teetering on the brink of utter poverty.” ( as summed up nicely by Urban Dictionary)
For the grand majority of common people, this word just doesn’t apply to us–we simply don’t have a lifestyle luxurious enough to hang our heads in shame over. Isn’t that shameful?