Glamour Girl
I wrote about the David & Goliath case of Colle vs. Chanel here, and about my impression of LV products here. Updates to both today.
First, Carmen Colle lost her counterfeit case against Chanel, but the couture house has been ordered to pay her 400,000 euros for breach of contract. The French court, in fact, called Chanel out for its “abusive termination” of Colle’s contract. But the hand that giveth also taketh away: Madame Colle was ordered to pay 100,000 euros for “blatant denigration” of Chanel’s name. In predictable lawyerly fashion, both sides are claiming victory. I still say hats off to Colle for her guts and character.
As for Louis Vuitton, not only are their bags ugly and overpriced, now it turns out that their much-vaunted craftmanship is wrought not by human hands but robotic ones. Business Week reports that the la-dee-dah brand has hoodwinked its adherents into believing that every seam, tuck, and plasticized expanse of canvas is handmade. A new ad campaign drives the point home (take a look at the short article—the ad titles have to be seen to be believed—does this brand ever do anything that isn’t pretentious??). But it’s all smoke and mirrors. The stuff is made on an assembly line. The factory managers have “been recruited from companies making such things as mobile phones and yogurt containers.”
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/15/09 at 07:17 AM
