Given that the company simply opened their first

What does the luxury house of Chanel and bridge-level brand BCBG Max Azria have in common? A week ago, despite BCBG's attempt to approx . a chic French style, the answer would have been: not much. Chanel's announcement for Dec. 28 of the forthcoming elimination of 200 jobs, however, cast the company in the uncharacteristic position of playing catch-up with a pattern that BCBG caught onto a month earlier, when it let go 125 employees. Despite the high end industry's confidence in the interest on premium goods, the market starts to level off. These tough economic times, apparently, doesn't distinguish between world-class plus wannabe brands.This might seem like common sense to most people—in fact, extravagance might logically seem like the very first retail tier that would be attack hard, given its base in high-priced fantasy—but the reaction in the world associated with luxury goods has been amongst shock, and muted fear, as if Chanel committed an egregious faux-pas. More chilling than using the incorrect fork for your salad, a layoffs have set off surf of panic as companies that have built their achievements by projecting an image regarding perfection, impervious to plebian fears about the economy, begin to understand that they, too, are in issues.Until now the most dramatic trends had been LVMH's cancellation of a thought out Tokyo flagship store and, equally shocking to those within the strange bubble that is manner, Prada's posters advertising price slices in their Milan store. But with the disappearance of actual jobs, the relationship is direr than the delayed growth in addition to smaller sales forecasts which have been part of the luxury world's reality for the past year. Alain Nemarq, the chairman of your French fine jewelry firm, Mauboussin, Michael Kors Handbags Le Figaro that the days of over-the-top luxurious are over and that "the pursuit of special trophies … is finished. We will today return to reason, decency and foresight. Along with luxury companies, however, virtually no such standard could possibly be enforced, and its doubtful whether conglomerates going through perpetual shareholder pressure, are going to err on the side of 'decency and discretion'. Also likely is that the most indulgent finishes of the market—perhaps Mr. Nemarq's $15 million dollar fecal material jewelry among them—will take a momentary backseat to more affordable groups, such as Vuitton's 'Neverfull' bags. Premium makes will try to reinvent by themselves via strategy that works up subtlety, a technique that's been serving Gucci Group star manufacturer Bottega Veneta well since its creation. And more and more premium retailers will resort to (gasp!) well-publicized sales in efforts to move stagnant products off store shelves. While in the long-term, however, it's ridiculous to think that an entire industry is gonna rediscover itself and abandon the identity and technique that has, until now, resulted in historic levels of growth and earnings.As unpleasant as it might often be to accept, greed, avarice as well as unrestrained lust are built-in elements of the human dust from your thoughts. When people have enormous amounts involving disposable wealth, these deeper qualities tend to surface, manifesting themselves in diamond-and-ruby encrusted mobile phones, and 1200-horsepower, color-shifting sportscars. As deep since this recession is going to be, it isn't going to change human nature, despite the refrain of voices extolling the major potential of the crisis—not unless this cheerleading is accompanied by a sincere self-examination through the principal players who brought us to this point in the first place. Personal bankers and mortgage lenders keep the lion's share of accountability, but the culture of greed extends across industries, but it finds physical form from the luxury world. No matter how much the less-fortunate evolve their attitudes toward finance, there will not be much practical effect except in cases where the wealthy and those that serve them also reassess their principles. Until then, the richest pieces of society, who performed a major role in damaging things for everyone else, are only paying lip service to some sort of public notion of what is predicted of them.Captains of the high end industry, when considering their plan, would do well to take so that you can heart this quote from Coco Chanel: "I love luxury. And high end lies not in abundance and ornateness but in the absence of vulgarity. Vulgarity is a ugliest word in our language. My spouse and i stay in the game to fight the item." Perhaps it's time so they can reconsider why they're hanging around. Given that the company simply opened their first The big apple store on Madison Avenue, the place baubles can fetch up to $15 million, Nemarq's statement seems like more of your public-relations pitch than an accurate conjecture. Luxury is built on the search for the unattainable. Given that logo-emblazoned Louis Vuitton handbags are more ubiquitous in comparison with low-key Hermes satchels, it's safe to say that attention isn't the effect most deluxe consumers are aiming for. Even if these folks were, Hermes bags are hardly your everyman's carryall of choice, stretching into the Mulberry Alexa Bag of thousands of dollars. Nemarq's pronouncement of a shift in this industry's guiding philosophy is interesting, however, because it explains how fashionable (for absence of a better word) it has become to help strike a modest offer.After a $750 billion bailout plan in addition to Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme, the general public cry for accountability is becoming deafening. Coupled with the president-elect's earning rhetoric about positive transform, it's clear that, coming from a perception standpoint, troubled corporations wish to use the crisis just as one opportunity to stand out as socially conscious and fiscally responsible, staking out a posture on the right side involving history. The problem is that his or her efforts are so palpably transparent, in addition to their sentiments, while grabbing room in the headlines, ring insincere. In the case of luxury companies, their accomplishment is predicated on convincing individuals to spend jaw-dropping sums of money in goods that no one needs. Its success in emerging market segments like China, Russia and also India is built on the backs of their own flashiest products, popular rank symbols for newly minted money seeking a lifestyle pedigree. Their ad campaigns tend to be replete with private jets, million-dollar diamonds, and stony-faced supermodels, which in turn express a distance coming from, and a disdain for, this everyday concerns of widespread people. So a healthy measure of skepticism is in order when Nemarq broadcast a new set of values running counter to the reality in the kind of behavior that drives his company's bottom line.There is no doubt that, in the coming years, the posh industry and its cousins inside the financial services sector will reassess how they do business. With regards to financial firms, if Obama is able to tighten regulation, it might bring long-term behavioral change in that stability and sustainability will be valued more than short-term gain.