Sunday 21 November 2010

deluxe

I love the cover of this book - graphic, witty, cheeky. Hmm, maybe should have stopped there with it. Dana Thomas is a journalist and I never have much luck with books written by journalists. It's like one neverending magazine article; all reporting, facts, figures and no central argument.

After some 300 pages the book finally gets to its crux:

luxury companies have gone mass and along the way forgotten their original mission, which was to provide the rich with truly exceptional products. (p331)

And what of it? That the mass market is now being ripped off by inferior products, manufactured sometimes under dismal circumstances, marketed on their historical prestige? Or that the rich are now bereft of truly exceptional, exclusive and expensive products on which to spend their millions? Really, these are the questions that are present throughout, unwritten and unaddressed, and that is the real failure of this book.

Further, in the last few chapters there were so many editing mistakes - missing particles, words repeated. Am I the only person who notices such things?

1 comment:

Leonie said...

I seem to have a radar for typos and other such errors and have found all sorts on promotional material from various companies who instantly get disregarded no matter how good their product is. Everyone relies so heavily on spell checking and no one takes the time to read the actual text to check for other errors. Laziness really.