Deluxe

How Luxury Lost Its Luster

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A hard-hitting behind-the-scenes look at how luxury fashion went global, revealing manufacturing secrets that Prada, Gucci, and Burberry don’t want you to know

“Fascinating . . . The story of luxury goods today is really about globalization, capitalization, class, and culture.”—Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek

“What Fast Food Nation did for food service, this book does for fashion.”—Los Angeles Times

Luxury was once available only to the rarefied, aristocratic world of old money. It offered a history of tradition, superior quality, and a pampered buying experience. Today, however, luxury is simply a product packaged and sold by multibillion-dollar global corporations like LVMH, Kering, and Gucci, that focus on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and, above all, profits. Journalist Dana Thomas digs deep into the dark side of the luxury industry with this uncompromising look behind the glossy facade, to ask: How did luxury lose its luster?

From the author of Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes
“With Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, [Dana] Thomas—who has been the cultural and fashion writer for Newsweek in Paris for 12 years—has written a crisp, witty social history that’s as entertaining as it is informative.” —New York Times
Dana Thomas is the author of Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes, Fashionopolis Young Readers Edition, Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano and the New York Times bestseller Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, all published by Penguin Press. She is the European Sustainability Editor for British Vogue, a regular contributor to the New York Times, and hosts “The Green Dream,” a weekly podcast on sustainability, produced by Wondercast.Studio. She wrote the screenplay for Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams, a feature documentary directed by Luca Guadagnino, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2020.
 
Thomas began her career writing for the Style section of The Washington Post, and for fifteen years she served as a cultural and fashion correspondent for Newsweek in Paris. Thomas has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and Architectural Digest. In 1987, she received the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation’s Ellis Haller Award for Outstanding Achievement in Journalism. In 2016, the French Minister of Culture named Thomas a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. And in 2017, she was a Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good. She lives in Paris. View titles by Dana Thomas

About

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A hard-hitting behind-the-scenes look at how luxury fashion went global, revealing manufacturing secrets that Prada, Gucci, and Burberry don’t want you to know

“Fascinating . . . The story of luxury goods today is really about globalization, capitalization, class, and culture.”—Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek

“What Fast Food Nation did for food service, this book does for fashion.”—Los Angeles Times

Luxury was once available only to the rarefied, aristocratic world of old money. It offered a history of tradition, superior quality, and a pampered buying experience. Today, however, luxury is simply a product packaged and sold by multibillion-dollar global corporations like LVMH, Kering, and Gucci, that focus on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and, above all, profits. Journalist Dana Thomas digs deep into the dark side of the luxury industry with this uncompromising look behind the glossy facade, to ask: How did luxury lose its luster?

From the author of Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes

Reviews

“With Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, [Dana] Thomas—who has been the cultural and fashion writer for Newsweek in Paris for 12 years—has written a crisp, witty social history that’s as entertaining as it is informative.” —New York Times

Author

Dana Thomas is the author of Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes, Fashionopolis Young Readers Edition, Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano and the New York Times bestseller Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, all published by Penguin Press. She is the European Sustainability Editor for British Vogue, a regular contributor to the New York Times, and hosts “The Green Dream,” a weekly podcast on sustainability, produced by Wondercast.Studio. She wrote the screenplay for Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams, a feature documentary directed by Luca Guadagnino, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2020.
 
Thomas began her career writing for the Style section of The Washington Post, and for fifteen years she served as a cultural and fashion correspondent for Newsweek in Paris. Thomas has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and Architectural Digest. In 1987, she received the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation’s Ellis Haller Award for Outstanding Achievement in Journalism. In 2016, the French Minister of Culture named Thomas a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. And in 2017, she was a Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good. She lives in Paris. View titles by Dana Thomas
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