In last week’s feature article, I wrote:
If we can let go of the consuming desire for an item, and resist the well-honed psychological pressure the luxury industry applies—pressure which that industry has evolved itself to apply—to make us want the item with urgency, then we can examine it dispassionately. Not saying to ourselves, “I want this item and I’ll be unhappy if I don’t get it”, nor “If I don’t buy this item now, it’ll cost me more or be unavailable, and I’ll be unhappy”, but asking ourselves:
Will having this item be pleasing after the wanting has done its work and convinced me to buy it?
I also said that I’d finish up my thoughts on the subject this week. However, by coincidence, the day after I published that article, I left on a long weekend vacation for Las Vegas, and that leads to a bit of an interlude.
Leaving for Las Vegas
With temperatures hovering around 110˚F (43˚C), and with no shortage of air conditioned luxury retail venues—virtually every household name maison has at least two or three boutiques in Las Vegas—I ended up spending a good deal of time shopping, or at least window browsing.
The Shops at Crystals. Image: lv-olga / Shutterstock
I wasn’t worried about spending foolishly. After all, not only do I write a newsletter on the luxury business, including the psychology of luxury, but I had just written an article on “wanting beautiful things without mistaking them for happiness”. But knowing the psychology of luxury isn’t the same as being immune to it.
How did it all work out? Not as easily as I might have imagined. As a Prussian general put it:
No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.
Or as someone of our era put it, somewhat more vividly:
Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time.
I thought I was prepared, and I was. And in the end, I made what I believe were rational decisions. But luxury maisons are good at what they do. It’s not a 350 € billion industry for nothing.
A tale of four boutiques
My experiences at four Las Vegas boutiques—two fashion, two watch—capture how things went.
