L for Luxury

This week, it is Luxury Brand Management. We had Simon Nyeck and Dennis Morrisset talking over the various concepts of luxury brand management. We also had a visit to Lous Vuitton Workshop, Museum and their Retail store. We got to know more about Fashion and Fashion brands. Atlast I found a subject which encourages me to watch FTV :-).

After this week, the final takeaway was that there is not much of a difference when it comes to Marketing of FMCG and luxury brands. Luxury brands make you dream, which puts them at the elite list. We also have the concept of Masstige, where some of the prestigious brands becoming accessible to commoners. All in all a nice one week of learning.

LV visit needs a special mention. Their workshop was on one corner of Paris. I was shocked to see Osterich, Alligator skins used as Exotic leathers for their bags. Also had a look at their museums, which had snake leather bags and seal leather bags. These guys get the leather from authorised suppliers and you need to have the permit to carry these leather bags for your travel. Left me thinking that we are taking the entire animal kingdom for granted for our luxury. The craftsmanship at LV is something that should be praised. Observed some of their employees making bags and trunks. Being a Mechanical Engineer I just could not help the feeling that if these processes were automated, they could en up producing more bags at a shorter time with much better quality. But it is for the craftsmanship they charge such a higher price.
Their museum had some special orders which were made for specific customers. Attained bliss on taking snaps with custom made order of Sharon Stone:-).

Friday night had the chance to visit this placed Caveaux de la Huichette, where Jazz was first played in Paris. As the name implies, it is a cave, where the Jazz band plays throughout the night and we have the old French men and women dancing. Swing or Lin-Hop was there to see and God it was so wonderful to see all these older people enjoying their time. Maybe I should take a clue from them.

Saturday, it was the France Brazil match and after the match was won by France, we went to Champs Elysees to have a look. Man it was chaos with cars honking and the traffic completely blocked. There were huge processions going on shouting Allez Le Bleu, ZIZOU and HENRY. ¨People were screaming, shouting, venting out their emotions. Made me feel a little uncomfortable,I should say. Here is the other face of Paris. This was completely opposite to the one that we saw at the Jazz place.

The third face of Paris was seen when we visited the artists village at Montmarte. It was a wonderful place with artists painting the portraits/caricatures of the walkers. I and Ashish got our caricatures done and it was really funny. These guys are geniuses in their own way. A couple of strokes here and a couple there, voila... you have the caricature of Arune ready! Later went for the boat ride at the river Siene.

One more week of romancing Paris still left. I just somehow dont feel that I have had enough of this place. Paris Je t'aime !!!!