A lot, definitely, but the luxury market seems to be dominated by a kind of Emperor's New Clothes mentality where the target market is desperate to pay way over the odds for (clearly inferior) Veblen goods, simply to give the impression of prosperity. The people with the money to support true craft seem hellbent on spending their money primarily on $15 items plastered with $800 of logos. Sad.
This article cuts to the heart of a serious modern dilemma: the dissolution of the sacred in labour, a crisis foreseen with prophetic clarity by Thomas Carlyle. I recall his ideas from memory, and so may not be interly exact, but the essence is still there.
Carlyle, writing in the early nineteenth century, identified the free market as a force of desecration, stripping work of its spiritual and communal worth. His diagnosis precedes Marx’s theory of proletarian alienation—not as a materialist critique, but as a lament for the loss of organic hierarchy and meaningful craft. The worker, severed from the dignity of creation, is reduced to a functionary of the “gig,” a mere cog in the machinery of mass production. The market, in its democratic levelling, does not liberate; it degrades, elevating the “cheap and nasty” as the inevitable triumph of quantity over quality.
Carlyle, a staunch elitist, insisted that only a true aristocracy—bound by duty and vision—could shield the masses from the ravages of unchecked commercialism. That is both consumerism and rampant marketing tapping into base desires. Your portrayal of the craftsman and his patron exemplifies this lost ideal: a relationship not of transaction, but of mutual recognition and moral order. Yet the modern age, in its relentless pursuit of efficiency and scale, 'the line must go up', has wiped out those ties, replacing them with the cold calculus of exchange.
Here lies the paradox: the very managerial state that might, in theory, defend local producers and cultural heritage against the homogenising forces of capital is itself a leviathan of standardisation. It does not preserve tradition; it administers its dissolution, replacing the organic with the bureaucratic, the sacred with the procedural.
Japan is the last country on earth where you can find craftsmanship which is treasured by people regardless of social class. But even there, the family firms are disappearing because people don’t have children. I used to buy clothes, shoes and bags from luxury western brands like Prada and Max Mara until
about 2008. But already around 2001 I noticed more clothes made in Romania but sold for the same price. It’s about that time that I began shopping in vintage stores where clothes are of higher quality. Now I buy from small Japanese brands that don’t even sell outside Japan. I go to Japan twice a year and shop there.
"Consumers chose cheap over good."
A lot, definitely, but the luxury market seems to be dominated by a kind of Emperor's New Clothes mentality where the target market is desperate to pay way over the odds for (clearly inferior) Veblen goods, simply to give the impression of prosperity. The people with the money to support true craft seem hellbent on spending their money primarily on $15 items plastered with $800 of logos. Sad.
This article cuts to the heart of a serious modern dilemma: the dissolution of the sacred in labour, a crisis foreseen with prophetic clarity by Thomas Carlyle. I recall his ideas from memory, and so may not be interly exact, but the essence is still there.
Carlyle, writing in the early nineteenth century, identified the free market as a force of desecration, stripping work of its spiritual and communal worth. His diagnosis precedes Marx’s theory of proletarian alienation—not as a materialist critique, but as a lament for the loss of organic hierarchy and meaningful craft. The worker, severed from the dignity of creation, is reduced to a functionary of the “gig,” a mere cog in the machinery of mass production. The market, in its democratic levelling, does not liberate; it degrades, elevating the “cheap and nasty” as the inevitable triumph of quantity over quality.
Carlyle, a staunch elitist, insisted that only a true aristocracy—bound by duty and vision—could shield the masses from the ravages of unchecked commercialism. That is both consumerism and rampant marketing tapping into base desires. Your portrayal of the craftsman and his patron exemplifies this lost ideal: a relationship not of transaction, but of mutual recognition and moral order. Yet the modern age, in its relentless pursuit of efficiency and scale, 'the line must go up', has wiped out those ties, replacing them with the cold calculus of exchange.
Here lies the paradox: the very managerial state that might, in theory, defend local producers and cultural heritage against the homogenising forces of capital is itself a leviathan of standardisation. It does not preserve tradition; it administers its dissolution, replacing the organic with the bureaucratic, the sacred with the procedural.
Japan is the last country on earth where you can find craftsmanship which is treasured by people regardless of social class. But even there, the family firms are disappearing because people don’t have children. I used to buy clothes, shoes and bags from luxury western brands like Prada and Max Mara until
about 2008. But already around 2001 I noticed more clothes made in Romania but sold for the same price. It’s about that time that I began shopping in vintage stores where clothes are of higher quality. Now I buy from small Japanese brands that don’t even sell outside Japan. I go to Japan twice a year and shop there.