Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre by Dana Thomas

by Minji Kang

Dana Thomas, a Paris-based American fashion journalist, and the author of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre observes how the counterfeiting market is moved in reality. The author mentions about the brief history of counterfeiting business in ancient times, middle ages, the Industrial Revolution, and the modern society today, but also she includes her interviews and anecdotes that she actually has experienced in Santee Alley and Guangzhou to investigate what is happening and how it is happening in counterfeiting market. She argued that "counterfeiting is about as old as civilization itself", and since long time ago, people have copied real things in lower qualities. People buy brands to “declare that you are a member of a tribe that subscribes to that particular brand’s message and its ethics”

Today, the luxury houses spend big grands for legal departments to protect their intellectual properties. On the other hand, some designers do not really care about it because they interpret it as a sign of popularity and success. The author captures not only the surfaces of the business, but how the business is linked with terrorism for the reason that the profits from selling the products, finance the terrorism. Furthermore, she captures the cultural reasons that why it is tricky to ban the counterfeiting business in China.