[lbo-talk] Making beautiful stuff

[Carl Remick]

>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
>Cseniornyc at aol.com wrote:
>
>>What if it costs $3,000 ? This what the average pair of shoes from Gucci 
>>or Versace costs these days. I wonder how Doug Henwood missed this little 
>>detail in gauging the social cost of luxury goods prodution.(Unless he was 
>>being densely ironic).
>
>My god. Gucci's don't go for $3,000 - that's 5-10 times too high 
><http://www.gucci.com/us/us-english/us/spring-summer-05/womens-shoes/view_all_pumps.shtml>. 
>In any case, I'm aware of how much stuff costs. My office is in Soho, and 
>I'm here almost every day, surrounded by luxury goods, in boutiques and on 
>people. Yeah, sure, there's conspicuous consumption going on, at highly 
>inflated prices. But the stuff is still beautiful - why deny that? Why 
>shouldn't socialists and their ideological kin want beautiful things for 
>everyone, and not  just the rich? Why not beautiful buildings, streets, 
>cities? Why always the moralizing about pricetags?

Beyond moralizing there's plain ol' gasping -- e.g., how about a $675 shirt? 

  That's the average price of an Alexander S. Kabbaz shirt, the choice of 
Tom Wolfe, Stanton Anderson, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Donald Bowen, 
Yul Brynner, I.W. Burnham, Oleg Cassini, Angel Cordero, Michael Douglas, 
Governor E. Edwards, Prince Bandar Al Faisal, Alan Flusser, Nick Forstmann, 
Alan Funt, Norman Hilton, Ernest Gallo, Julio Gallo, John Gambling, Cary 
Grant, William R. Hearst, Charles Koch, William Koch, David Koch, Ralph 
Lauren, Al Lerner, Brian Little, Stanley Marcus, Ambassador Robert McKinney, 
Aristotle Onassis, Ronald O. Perelman, Dan Rather, John Rockefeller, 
Laurence Rockefeller, David Rockefeller, Nelson Rockefeller, Benson Selzer, 
William Shea, Barry Slotnick, Senator W. Stuart Symington, Hon. Herbert 
Tenzer, Preston Tisch, Jamie Wyeth, Steve Wynn, Jerome Zipkin et al..

BTW, one of those listed, Gary Grant, used to cut the buttons off his old 
shirts and recycle 'em, giving a big boost to his wardrobe's 
cost-effectiveness.

The Kabbaz website's worth a visit, like visiting a clothing shrine or 
something: <http://customshirt1.com/ASK/index.htm>

Carl

"... [Gatsby] took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them one by one 
before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel... shirts 
with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple green and lavender 
and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly with a strained 
sound Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. 
'They're such beautiful shirts,' she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick 
folds. 'It makes me sad because I've never seen such -- such beautiful 
shirts before.'"

                                     -- The Great Gatsby