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Deluxe - how luxury and cruise lost its luster

What has the cruise industry with luxury fashion and luster, luxury design and deluxe lifestyle in common?
by Earl of Cruise
In first glance nothing, but looking deeper into everything, Cruising and Travel is a lifestyle as is fashion.
Roger-Henri Expert - Study for the Ladies Drawing Room and Music Room of NORMANDIE
Roger-Henri Expert - Study for the Ladies Drawing Room and Music Room of NORMANDIE (27,4x37,5cm 10 3/4´´ x 14 3/4´´) 1934 offered at 7000-8000 USD at Sotheby´s
The salons of ss/te NORAMNDIE had been the stage for the international society - digitalized copy of editors collection
Cruising and traveling has become a basic lifestyle, 25mio cruisers are expected in 2016, after the "so called democratisation" of cruising and travelling. But with the democratisation especially the cruise has lost its luster totally. It was known as the art of travel for the old and rich. Rich you had to be, yes. But old? No! Even in the heydays of of luxury travel it was quite adventurous and you had to be fit for different climates and such as a beginner. Then other countries - Oscar Wilde once wrote: traveling is enriching, and is education. Only if you stay openminded and not behave as a colonial clerck who is arguing about this and that, and resonates: at home it is best. Those we find still today, and these guys should stay at home in bed.
The "democratisation of travel in general is the shift from small family businesses of beautifully handcrafted goods or services on board stylish designed ships to global corporations selling to the "middle market" (mass market) - a shift from exclusivity to accessibility, from an emphasis on tradition and quality to an emphasis on growth, branding and profits.
Once, luxury was available only to the rarefied and aristocratic world of old money and royalty. Even the nouveau rich could not easily access it. It offered a history of tradition, superior quality, and a pampered buying experience. Today, however, luxury is simply a product packaged and sold by multibillion-dollar global corporations focused on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and, above all, profits. This profit is the driving factor for the corporations and not the democracising of travel or cruising or luxury for the masses. When Kloster and then CARNIVAL were looking for new clientele, they looked to the lowest end of the food chain (John Maxtome-Graham). They did tremendously well, but it was a challenge, as this new clientele was highly volatile - with any threat to a  destination they vanish. They naively  or don´t know what a cruise is and believe the  sunshine filled broshures and tool legal action for cloudy, rainy or stormy weather ... Good examples are the babbling "cruisers" of the ANTHEM of the SEAS or those arguing after being hit by Hermine ...
queuing to enter a modern cruise vessel
Only seldom is the sea perfectly smooth, the waves are low, and the sun is shining. Most of time, the sea, and especially the Noth Atlantic is still today a dangerous area on which to sail. Our oceans are the weather kitchen, our weather is cooked by temperatures, winds and the ciculation of our Mothership Earth.
What the cruise lines today in majority are selling is the image of a sea voyage and they made the ships the destination and the ports interupt the cruise by "accident" or only for maintenence, as food, beverage and fuel refilling stations. This is very similar to what corporations do in the fashion business.
 Paul Iribe drawing of the Grand Salon on board ss/te NORMANDIE
 Paul Iribe drawing of the Grand Salon on board ss/te NORMANDIE
The salons and decks of NORMANDIE welcomed the international society with grandeur and offered the stage to be seen and to see, it was in those days a must to be on board the NORMANDIE to be someone - digitalized copy of editors collection
They are selling a brand left to an image of its former glory and luxury.
The more e.g. Louis Vuitton products are floating around the less luxury it really is. And it is the same with the cruise - it is far from luxury in the mass market. And a ship with more than 500 passengers on board is nothing less than a mass market hotel, happening to sail on the seas.
The award-winning journalist Dana Thomas digs with her book `Deluxe - How Luxury Lost its Luster´ deep into the dark side of the luxury industry to uncover all the secrets that Prada, Gucci, and Burberry don´t want us to know. `Deluxe´ is an uncompromising look behind the glossy façade that will enthrall anyone interested in fashion, finance, or culture. With globalization, Paris, Milano, Berlin and New York are no longer exclusive luxury meccas. Take notes of that gigantic 690,000-square-foot "luxury mall" called Crocus City (featuring 180 boutiques, including Armani, Gucci and Versace) which is flourishing outside Moscow, and that a group of high-end boutiques will be part of a luxury complex called Legation Quarter, that opened in Tiananmen Square in 2006.
“Approximately 40 percent of all Japanese own a Louis Vuitton product” today, and one recent poll showed that by 2004 the average American woman was buying more than four handbags a year (poll from 2005). With more people visiting Caesars Palace’s glitzy Forum Shops each year than Disney World, Las Vegas has made shopping synonymous with gambling and entertainment, even as outlet malls have brought designer clothing and accessories within the reach (and budget) of many suburbanites.
Then there are all those who buy the fakes on beaches or in cities well known for knock-offs - Athens, Istanbul, Turkish Riviera. Mass market "luxury brands" are sold at prices, where one must know it IS fake. The inflationary?? sold LOUIS VUITTON brand made me no longer using my expensive original items, as I won´t be seen with everybodies "luxury" or fake.
The once high-profile luxury brands Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Cartier and others were founded in the 18th or 19th centuries by artisans dedicated to creating beautiful, finely made wares for the royal court in France and later, with the fall of the monarchy, for European aristocrats, rich  the bourgeoise and then prominent American families. Luxury remained, "a domain of the wealthy and the famous" until "the Youthquake of the 1960s" (in Germany the 1968 generation) pulled down social barriers and overthrew elitism, style and good manners (behavior). It would remain out of style "until a new and financially powerful demographic -the unmarried female executive -emerged in the 1980s." Also named as part of the Yuppies or Dinks (double income no kids).
New Orleans Bar on board CARNIVAL TRIUMPH, the objects in the blue reflected oysters - editor with friends
The same happend when liner companies saw their future in cruising, or established cruise companies tried to find a new clientlel. They "threw out" the old and wealthy and concentrated on the younger generation with oddly painted vessels, crazy, shrill interiors and new onboard programs but little success. They vanished into the history box. These comapnies forgot their old wealthy clientel that still traveled in style and stayed unserved by the new emerging mass marketeers as RCCL, NCL and CARNIVAL. With "agressive" fun oriented marketing and TV commercials Carnival fished in the lower middle class for its new clientel. After a litterally rocky start CARNIVAL became a major player and was the driving factor turning the cruise business into an industry. Old reputated cruise companies as HAPAG LLOYD got the turn into new times as they had focussed on the German upper market - the old rich. Those relying on the US market vanished into Nirvana after oil or Dollar decline crisis. Or had been absorbed be the mass market companies filled with cash and turned a luxury brand into a me-too mass market appendix. TV shows still generated the image of luxury even for the low costers.
A similarity can be seen with CUNARD after the purchse by CARNIVAL the once renown CUNARD brand degenerated into a mass market product that is only an American image of what Miami think is British, or HOLLAND AMERICA it is turned into something what is believed to be a Dutch product. All companies bought by CARNIVAL turned into a streamlined Carnivalesqued product loosing the original brand indentity.
As both disposable income and credit-card debt soared in industrialized nations, the middle class became the target of luxury product vendors, who poured money into provocative advertising campaigns and courted movie stars and celebrities as style icons. In order to maximize profits, many corporations looked for ways to cut corners: they began to use cheaper materials, outsource production to developing nations (while falsely claiming that their goods were made in Western Europe) and replace hand craftsmanship with assembly-line production. Classic goods meant to last for years gave way, increasingly, to trendy items with a short shelf life; cheaper lines (featuring lower-priced items like T-shirts and cosmetic cases) were introduced as well. In paralell it happend in the cruise industry. This is also for the interior outfittings of the modern cruise vessels. It is cheap and in the end plastic, even when gold-looking. You touch it - you feel it: cheap. When in the end of the 80s the ships suddenly grew bigger their outfitting became more and more a faked luxury, and with CARNIVAL openly plastic. I still remember after years the Maya-Inca-Atztec mixed panelling in the lobby of CARNIVAL TRIUMPH made of plastic, surounded by black light neonlamps and a topping center yellow bulb crying out loud "I am plastic but try to imitate a bluish sandstone" ...
Carnival Triumph Carnival Cruise Line
CRANIVAL TRIUMPH in New York on the Hudson - Source: Wikipedia
It has to be as tastes change within a far shorter period than even years before. You can see the wreckage of the outfittings within days on a cruises on board. A hole here and another one there emerging over night And the Mega vessels have to be filled each sailing anew with passengers expecting the latest trends and fashions on board to be amused to death and axious to be bored. That is giving the cruise companies the advantage of promoting their makeovers as huge advertisments and declare such an overworked old tincan a new silverbowl.
Although Dana Thomas quotes in `Deluxe´ Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue and Grand Priestress of fashion and style, saying such changes mean that “more people are going to get better fashion” and “the more people who can have fashion, the better,” the author reaches a more elitist and pessimistic conclusion. “The luxury industry has changed the way people dress,” she writes. “It has realigned our economic class system. It has changed the way we interact with others. It has become part of our social fabric. To achieve this, it has sacrificed its integrity, undermined its products, tarnished its history and hoodwinked its consumers. In order to make luxury ‘accessible,’ tycoons have stripped away all that has made it special.
“Luxury has lost its luster.”
And it is the same with the cruise. The cruise as is has lost the luster.
Dana Thomas Credit Alice Springs
By Dana Thomas
Illustrated. 375 pages. The Penguin Press. $27.95.





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