Last weekend I decided to help my boyfriend with his Christmas shopping. The challenge was to find a gift for his 15 years old niece. Not having a contact with teenage girls in over a decade myself, I decided to confirm my intuition about teens favorite brands. I began my initial search by going on the Juicy Couture website. After seeing a few possible options I googled the question about teens favorite brands and saw an answer of a teenage girl, who favors brands such as Louis Vuitton, D&G, etc. Given the fact that a Louis Vuitton bag is quite expensive and I, a 31 year old woman, find it a luxury to own one, I became slightly depressed.
It wasn’t the fact that I find the bag expensive that depressed me, but the fact that it indicates a blurring line between girls and women. I associate the LV brand with being a mature woman, who deserves the product. Making it a teen brand cheapens the experience, at least for me. Not only I don’t want to be associated with 15 year old girls at this point in my life, but I also don’t want these teenagers to share my brand experience while using the product.
This realization led me to another thought about luxury goods and overspending in general. It is a common knowledge by now that we are in this economic mess partially due to the obsessive over spending. That being said, I had never associated the social responsibility of the brands towards their market with the failure of past business strategies. Companies will always want to make money, but in my opinion, targeting a wider audience is ultimately not a sustainable solution. Luxury items are luxurious for a reason. Teenage girls are not supposed to have them and middle class women are not supposed to overspend on them. I love my LV purse, but I do not want to rush and buy another one even if i had the money to spare. I want to enjoy the one I have, to experience the brand as it was designed and I don’t want to get myself in debt over it. In my opinion targeting the financially unstable is a short term business growth strategy for Luxury goods.
