–Parul Sharma
In 2018, Payless robbed people blind. The remarkable part? The victims were delighted. Luxury, it turns out, is not an object- it’s a feeling. And feelings, as it happens, are remarkably cheap to manufacture.
It was, in hindsight, the most elegant con of the decade. A repurposed boutique space, some strategic lighting, a made-up Italian-sounding name- “Palessi”, and suddenly a $19.99 shoe became a $400 object of desire. Influencers arrived, browsed, and bought without hesitation, describing their finds as “sophisticated,” “high quality,” and “worth every penny.” Nobody lied to them- nobody had to. They were responding to the room, the price, the feeling that something this expensive in a space this beautiful simply had to be worth it. Placebo much?
When Payless finally revealed the joke, the embarrassment was brief. The implications, however, should have lingered much longer.
The fake name trend was so well received (by the bonafide fashion insiders. And the authentic designers. And the—heck—by everybody) that Deisel (yes, Deisel), decided to jump on the bandwagon the same year. Aiming to recreate a “mirror-image” of its contemporary, Diesel worked with agencies to secure prime real estate on the (in)famous Canal Street (IYKYK).
In true Canal Street fashion, it opened a fake store selling “Deisel” products: knockoff apparel, complete with haphazard bins, neon handwritten signs, and plastic bags. The items shoppers bought were actually one-of-a-kind pieces specially crafted by the Diesel design team, disguised with fake “Deisel” branding. The campaign was called “Go With the Fake,” part of a broader “Go With the Flaw” ethos questioning whether a brand name is what people are really buying.
We have agreed, collectively and without much questioning, that expensive means better. That a logo is a guarantee. That the weight of a price tag is proof of worth. Fashion didn’t invent this lie, but it has perfected it, wrapped it up in tissue paper in a gold embossed box, and charged us handsomely for believing it.
Don’t believe me? Answer this. What do Balenciaga and a plastic bag have in common? If your answer was nothing, Balenciaga would like a word, and your credit card details.
In 2022, Balenciaga released a bag that was, by every measurable definition, a plastic bag. Retail price: $1,800. IKEA’s version costs 99 cents and, for the record, holds more. Around the same time, Margiela was charging $1,100 for sneakers that came pre-dirtied from the factory, because apparently the luxury consumer no longer has time to ruin their own shoes. The industry looked at the most ordinary objects imaginable and saw, correctly, that the logo would do the rest. Apparently they were right.
Somewhere along the way, spending obscene amounts of money stopped being a private embarrassment and became a public sport. Bragging rights became reserved for those who sold an arm and a leg to buy a $700 flip-flop (read: “luxury name” sandal handcrafted with calfskin leather and painted with a drop of dragon’s blood). The others applauded the selling of the said arm and leg, while silently judging the buyer. The product itself? PU leather. Polyester. All “fakes” sold and marketed as “authentic” (except for the dragon’s blood- that is pretty real). Because if luxury says polyester, then polyester it is.
And that has nothing to do with quality.
Pull back the velvet curtain on almost any luxury handbag and what you find is not craftsmanship- it is an enigma. There was a time when the highest compliment a bag could receive was age. A worn leather handle, a clasp softened by years of use, a lining that had seen pen and lipstick marks- these were marks of quality. That logic has been quietly retired. Linings that tear within a year, leather that has been corrected, coated, and buffed to look the part rather than play it, and hardware that tarnishes just long enough after purchase that complaining about it feels embarrassing. Want to repair it? Good luck. You have a better chance of landing a Birkin.
And if we are going to be name-dropping big-name brands, how about we actually mention them? For years, the likes of Gucci, Prada, and many more have leveraged their name, prestige, and aura to weave tales of quality and exclusivity. Making 200% profits, marketing a bag gilding through the Palace of Versailles by a woman decked head-to-toe in gold. Their customers? Women decked head-to-toe in gold. Campaigns depicting an artisan bent over a single seam in a sun-drenched Italian atelier. Craftwashing, in other words.
Craftwashing is what happens when a brand has a better story budget than a production budget. When “hand-stitched”, “artisanal” and “heritage craft” are doing significantly more work than the hands that supposedly made the thing. The approach is simple- tell the story of the artisan loudly enough that nobody asks about the factory. Show the craftsman, the atelier, the single seam being perfected over an Italian afternoon. Don’t show the bag being mass produced in a factory, the poor grained leather, or the margin between what it cost to make and what it cost you to buy.
Notice how I did not mention Hermes and the Birkin here? That is because Hermes belongs to a rare collection of brands that have actually earned the language they use — where the atelier is real, the craftsman is real, and the waiting list exists because the supply genuinely cannot keep up with the demand. Don’t believe me? Ask Tanner Leatherstein (real name: Volkan Yilmaz). The leather-craftsman-turned-educator regularly dissects luxury handbags, analyzing the leather, finishes, hardware, construction, as well as the labour and material costs, giving a reality check to those who care. The bags, it turns out, do not always appreciate the scrutiny.
If this still doesn’t tell you what luxury is- congratulations: you’re their ideal customer. The atelier, the Italian afternoon, the hands that supposedly spent weeks perfecting a single seam -theatre. All of it, performed for an audience too invested in the story to question the script. We bought the room, the logo, the tissue paper, and the gold embossed box. And the emperor? Very well dressed.
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