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Luxury: a journey of discovery?
by Ramona Lyons| San Francisco, US
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
tags: americas, consumer culture, making sense, semiotics
I recently watched a lengthy spot for Cartier, 'L'Odysee de Cartier, that made me consider what luxury brands are trying to tell us today.
In the Cartier piece, a leopard/panther avatar breaks its carapace of diamonds, journeys through time and space, and explores a magical, bejeweled world. This world is marked by a seemingly omniscient and global view of Cartier’s past: horse drawn carriages, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal (balanced on an elephant’s back), vintage airplanes, and iconic French architecture. Interestingly, these spaces are populated with jeweled exotic animals- magical living entities hidden from common sight. The leopard’s tour of these spectacles is drawn together in a loose narrative ending in communion with a woman gowned in red. She strokes the leopard, and diamonds gleam where her hand has left its fur. They’re old friends, it seems, even lovers.
But ultimately, what does all this tell us about the world of Cartier? This world is defined by selective provenance; it claims cultural authority (to say what’s beautiful, desirable, luxurious) from a mythologized history of exotic lands and treasures drawn from both mysterious natural phenomena and the heart of culture. Importantly, it’s a place where the unknown, secret life of these things is revealed to those in the know.
In this world, luxury is the experience of discovery driven by a specific kind of knowledge. This knowledge is presented as secret knowledge, and the journey to discover these things a heroic and even sacred one (the musical theme has a hand in this, as the tremulous violins in the beginning tell me to anticipate something revealed, the mournful cello later underlines the arduousness of this journey, followed by a children’s choir soaring above).
And, what’s the role of the consumer in relationship to Cartier? Through Cartier, the luxury consumer is cast as a cultured explorer, a person who enjoys confirmation and articulation of their particular strain of cultural capital, but also strives to transcend a conventional understanding of these things. However it is really more ‘armchair explorer’ – the consumer is not necessarily an intimate, the leopard roams alone (despite its affection for the lady in red).
The sheer grandeur of the Cartier spot (one cannot ignore the grand format brand statement) reminded me of another spot by Louis Vuitton launched a while back, ‘The Spirit of Travel.’ In deep contrast to Cartier, the LV piece locates LV’s authority (to establish what’s beautiful, desirable, luxurious) in the brand’s ability to articulate the subjective nature of discovery. Also shifting through global time and space, LV represents its world through fine details: the glow of light through the pages of a book, the shimmer on a water’s edge, fog flowing over an ‘Asian’ waterway- all through impressionistic photography implying individual sensory experience. Here, sensory and personal experience clearly trumps externally constructed experience and spectacle (though of course it can be argued that subjectivity at this level is still just another trope, box and definition to be checked off).
So what’s luxury in the world of LV? Being able to discover your moment ‘in the moment.’ Importantly, LV tells us quite directly that it’s an experience of discovery driven by self-knowledge. Here, the LV consumer is a devotee to this pilgrimage and escape into self.
Both Cartier and LV instruct luxury consumers on the importance and nature of discovery and how to, well, discover it. Despite its ‘wild’ leopard avatar, Cartier is more the starry eyed curator at the Louvre, lifting the curtain just a bit for a special glimpse of wonder. In comparison, LV is a spiritual guide, a more intimate relationship to consumers overall.
But this is not to say there aren’t real commonalities here- each brand highlights a particularly western (post-colonial) politic of desire- since part of this ’journey’ is an exotic experience that speaks to the ‘foreign,’ the strange and other.
And, ultimately, both tap into fairly residual themes (the ‘cultured’ connoisseur and imaginative adventurer, the spiritual-Buddha traveler) and leverage the journey metaphor to frame a foundational perspective on luxury present within contemporary cultural consciousness. Both brands tell us that luxury is part of a noble and meaningful adventure, and that discovery- wonderful, fleeting, and rare- is an emotional space attainable through each brand’s distinct exploratory path.
© Ramona Lyons 2012
29 March 2012 at 7:40 pm
Ramona says:
Malcolm- I so appreciate your comments about Hermes here (well, and Tottenham, but that’s another story). An incredibly vibrant memory I have of Hermes that colors everything I think about the brand is of a vintage bottle of Caleche my aunt gave me when I was a teenager. It had the Hermes horse drawn ‘caleche’ silhouette on the label. Despite a current move toward playful lightness and informality, the brand still retains this ‘gentleman on the move’ core. Travel and exploration in its different permutations does seem to be a core code of luxury, since it represents a privileged fluidity and freedom afforded to the few.
BTW- can’t get my hands on their mag, but their corporate website is telling- the ‘tie break’ section is quite playful, and I think speaks to a broader articulation of masculinity and style while retaining their gentleman core (the commercial OO7 mystery shopper would be completely at home with this crew- well- at least in the US):
http://lesailes.hermes.com/us/en/
29 March 2012 at 6:26 am
Malcolm Evans says:
Thanks Ramona. A fascinating piece. Great to get your input.
The Hermes brand is a great example of what you’re describing here. There’s a narrative/myth of the founder as a tastefully eccentric world-travelling gentleman ethnographer and the Hermes magazine is well worth getting hold of as a source for following that up. It’s a kind of luxe version of the nineteenth century cabinet of curiosities – and this code occasionally seeps through into Hermes advertising too.
The only Hermes outlet I ever found that was happy to give the magazine away without an overpriced purchase involved in the deal was in Hong Kong. Then again I’ve probably got ‘mystery shopper AKA commercial 007’ written all over me by now (on the Bond of semiotics theme I aways try to shop in a dinner suit unless I’m wearing something arch-stylist Tyler Brule has recommended in his Fast Lane column in the Financial Times – currently a pair of divine sweat pants I picked up for virtually nothing in Tottenham, North London, during the street activity here in UK last summer).
We definitely want to hear more in coming months from cultural and semiotic analysts over there in North America! We know commercial semiotics is taking off big time in US and there are plenty of people in Europe, Asia, South America, Australasia, Africa who want to know more about you guys and hook up with you. Aspirants as well as current practicioners. Email me even if you’re not quite ready to post an article with us yet – m.evans@semionaut.net