因應不景氣，高級品市場受到前所未有的衝擊，但是，講究生活品質、品味的法國人，可不屈服，他們硬是發展出一套因應的新哲學，喔，生活倹約，也是一種新哲學、新態度，一種時尚，總之，法國人永遠都是以一種精神層面來面對物質問題，否則怎能叫法國人呢? 一絕！值得品味喔！
In the lap of luxury, Paris squirms
By Elaine Sciolino
Thursday, January 15, 2009
PARIS: France is the birthplace of luxury fashion, and here the recession biting the world has the feel of a morality play.
As high-end consumers everywhere have suddenly suppressed their appetite for luxury goods, what was once considered a recession-proof industry has been hit hard.
High-end stores in the United States watched in horror as holiday sales tanked, while in Tokyo, Louis Vuitton canceled plans for what would have been its largest and most glittery store anywhere.
For the French, each wave of bad news has brought high anxiety here.
When Chanelrecently announced the layoff of 200 temporary employees only slightlymore than 1 percent of its 16,000-member work force the dailynewspaper Le Parisien called the news a bombshell.
The television channel LCI described the move as the most serious setback to the company since Coco Chanel fired her entire staff and closed shop when war broke out in 1939.
Butthere is also, paradoxically, an underlying satisfaction here that anera of sometimes vulgar high living is over and that a more bedrockFrench way of life will emerge.
Only in France is the recession lauded for posing a crisis in values.
Arecent issue of Le Figaro Magazine featured a 12-page guide toscaled-down living in 2009, with predictions that people will work lessand put family (even in-laws) first. A French trend expert quoted inthe magazine dramatically described the changes as nothing less than "arevolution in values."
Alain Némarq, the chairman of Mauboussin,the prestige jewelry firm, noted in an interview that saving the luxuryindustry should be an important national priority because it employs200,000 people in France, is part of French heritage, brings prestigeto the country and seduces not just the "happy few" but a large swathof the public.
Rather than trying to keep the machine running bypumping out high-price hand bags, watches and other goods, he proposedthe unthinkable: the entire luxury industry should slash prices. "Weneed a return to reason, decency, discretion, beauty and creativity inother words, to true values," Némarq said. (Mauboussin has lead byexample. It has sold its one-carat diamond solitaire "Chance of Love"ring for about $14,500, roughly a third less than its normal price, andits lower-end 0.15-carat diamond ring was priced at $895, Némarq said.)
SomeFrench intellectuals want to go much further, calling for the death ofthe entire luxury industry as a sort of national ritual of purification.
"Since the ancient Greeks, luxury goods have always been stamped with the seal of immorality," said Gilles Lipovetsky,a sociologist who has written several books about consumerism. "Theyrepresent waste, the superficial, the inequality of wealth. They haveno need to exist."
The political champion for the new economic morality is a recent convert: President Nicolas Sarkozy,formerly known as "President Bling-Bling." He entered office pledgingto inject more Anglo-Saxon-style capitalism by getting the French to"work more to earn more."
But last week in Paris,Sarkozy and the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair hosted aconference of political leaders and Nobel Prize-winning economists tofind ways to instill moral values into the global economy. The oldfinancial order had been "perverted" by "amoral" and uncontrolledcapitalism, Sarkozy said, deploring the fact that, "the signs of wealthcount more than wealth itself."
He praised the "return of the state" as a regulator of capitalist excess.
Paradoxically,that sentiment may not be all that difficult for the French to accept.France's national identity may seem wrapped up tight in the aura ofluxury elegant dress, sophisticated perfume, good food and wine, andno shortage of Champagne for the flimsiest of celebrations. But eventhough the French more than most Europeans appreciate the finestquality they can afford, they pride themselves on balance. Franceremains a deeply conservative country, one in which it traditionallyhas been unacceptable to show off material possessions. Most French usedebit cards, not credit cards, which means they tend not to spend morethan they have in their bank accounts. Getting a mortgage is atorturous process.
And so, many see in the closing of an era offree and easy spending on luxury goods when luxury became associatedwith flash and ostentation around the world the potential for arestoration of the classic French virtues of restraint and modesty.Even a bit of suffering and sacrifice might be in order.
"This whole crisis is like a big spring housecleaning both moral and physical," Karl Lagerfeld,the designer for Chanel, said in an interview. "There is no creativeevolution if you don't have dramatic moments like this. Bling is over.Red carpety covered with rhinestones is out. I call it 'the newmodesty.' "
Still, Lagerfeld is quick to point out that hishouse is doing just fine, that the layoffs this month were blown out ofproportion and that Chanel's Paris-Moscow collection last month broughtin 17 percent more in sales than his Paris-London show in 2007.
Inkeeping with the new national mood and in deference to hard economicrealities the designer Nathalie Rykiel said she will show the new Sonia Rykielcollection in March not with a grand theatrical spectacle for 1,500people in a vast rented space, but with two small 200-guest mini-showsin her boutique on the Boulevard St.-Germain.
"In the end it probably is not going to cost much less so this is not about the money," she said over lunch at the Café de Flore."It's a desire for intimacy, to go back to values. We need to return toa smaller scale, one that touches people. We will be saying, 'Come tomy house. Look at and feel the clothes.' "
Certainly, retrenchment was felt over the holiday season in Paris, where caterers were hurt by cancellations of year-end cocktail parties.If there were parties at all, there was more duck mousse and a lot lessfoie gras. Champagne, the global wholesale sales of which dropped inOctober by 16.5 percent compared with the previous year, was servedless at French tables; fizzy French wine without the official Champagne appellation was served more.
At La Grande Épicerie, the vast food hall in Le Bon Marchédepartment store, French and Italian caviar sold as well as the muchmore pricey Russian variety; the pastry chefs resisted the temptationto bake 100 euro designer Bûche de Noël cakes.
"Luxuryproducts that have savoir faire rather than bling-bling offered asense of refuge," said Frédéric Verbrugghe, the food hall's directorgeneral. "Sales of Dom Pérignon didn't suffer, but ostentatiouspackaging didn't move. In the past, customers would buy an entire blockof foie gras; this year it was just five slices."
Many French executives take the long view that the economy will eventually rebound. Some vintners recall that the French nobility stopped buying Champagne during the country's revolution in 1789, forcing winemakers to find markets abroad.
"We have been in business for 300 years," said Dominique Hériard Dubreuil, chairman of the Rémy Cointreau Group, which produces Rémy Martin cognac and Piper-Heidsieck Champagne. "We were hit by the phylloxera insect in the 19th centurythat destroyed our vines and our capacity to produce. We have faced twoworld wars. I see the crisis as a challenging but constructive event."
Andfor Lagerfeld, cutting back his own spending at Chanel is not part ofhis "new modesty" strategy. He said he is not being forced by theprivate company's owners to bend or adapt because of financialconstraints. "We have no budget, we do what we want and throwing moneyout the window brings money back in through the front door," he said."The bottom line is that I don't deal with the bottom line. The luxuryin my life is I never have to think about it."
文章定位：
