Branded: Bad Girls Go Shopping

Abstract

The Japanese fascination with high-end luxury goods has captured worldwide attention for good reason. Japanese have become by far the largest group of consumers of American and European designer-brand fashion goods, their purchases accounting for 40 percent of this multi-billion-dollar global market.² In 2002, a Merrill Lynch analyst stated that the dozen largest fashion houses in Europe owed one out of every three dollars in worldwide sales to Japanese consumers.³ Websites for leading brands such as Cartier, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton include Japanese-language pages and many high-end boutiques abroad regularly employ Japanese-speaking sales personnel.⁴ Among these brands, Louis Vuitton has been particularly successful in Japan since it was first promoted in 1977 by a new magazine for young women, JJ: By 1999, an estimated 40 percent of Japanese women owned at least one Louis Vuitton product⁵ and more than half of Japanese women in their twenties had a Louis Vuitton handbag.⁶ When Louis Vuitton opened its flagship store in the stylish Omotesandō shopping district in Tokyo in September 2002, it earned $1 million in opening day sales.⁷ Store openings for Hermès and Prada in 2001 were remarkably successful as well.⁸

With her party imminent, Muffy was as hyperactive as a Japanese tourist in a Louis Vuitton outlet store.¹

Plum Sykes, Bergdorf Blondes