{"id":20268,"date":"2010-02-09T10:16:20","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T15:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=20268"},"modified":"2013-12-15T04:12:45","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T09:12:45","slug":"handcrafted-by-beauties-a-marketing-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/02\/09\/handcrafted-by-beauties-a-marketing-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Handcrafted By Beauties, A Marketing Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katrin sent along one ad from a campaign by Louis Vuitton.\u00a0 The campaign centers around the fantasy that young, beautiful women with porcelain (white) skin are hand-crafting their products.\u00a0 A two-page spread:\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>Text:<\/p>\n

The Young Woman and the Tiny Folds.<\/p>\n

In everything from Louis Vuitton, there are elements that cannot be fully explained.\u00a0 What secret little gestures do our craftsmen discreetly pass on?\u00a0 How do we blend innate skill and inherent prowess?\u00a0 Or how can five tiny folds lengthen the life of a wallet?\u00a0 Let’s allow these mysteries to hang in the air.\u00a0 Time will provide the answers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another example is titled “The Seamstress With Linen Thread and Beeswax<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

But, of course, “Hardly any Vuitton bags or wallets are handmade.”\u00a0 Or so says Carol Matlack at Business Week<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 She continues:<\/p>\n

While reporting an article on Vuitton <\/a>in 2004, I visited one of its factories in the village of Ducey near Mont St. Michel. There I saw rows of workers seated at sewing machines, stitching together machine-cut pieces of canvas and leather. The partially finished bags were rolled from one workstation to the next on metal carts.<\/p>\n

It was no sweatshop. The building was modern and airy, with windows overlooking the Normandy countryside. But the work being done there didn\u2019t resemble in any way the painstaking handiwork shown in Vuitton\u2019s ads. Indeed, the factory managers \u2013 who had been recruited from companies making such things as mobile phones and yogurt containers — talked proudly about the strides they had made in automating every step of the process. Just about the only Vuitton products still made by hand, they told me, were custom-made items produced at its historic atelier in the Paris suburb of Asni\u00e8res.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

UPDATE (May ’10)! <\/strong><\/span>Katrin and Anjan G. messaged us to let us know that the U.K. Advertising Standards Agency has decided that these ads violate truth in advertising<\/a>.\u00a0 They’ve been disallowed.<\/p>\n

For other examples of marketing that mythologizes its manufacturing processes, see these posts on Goldfish crackers (mommies and daddies make them!)<\/a> and Ecko Jeans (sweatshops are full of hot women in bikinis!)<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katrin sent along one ad from a campaign by Louis Vuitton.\u00a0 The campaign centers around the fantasy that young, beautiful women with porcelain (white) skin are hand-crafting their products.\u00a0 A two-page spread:Text: The Young Woman and the Tiny Folds. In everything from Louis Vuitton, there are elements that cannot be fully explained.\u00a0 What secret little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,225,36,55,23703,293],"class_list":["post-20268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-clothesfashion","tag-economics","tag-gender","tag-marketing","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20268"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60482,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20268\/revisions\/60482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}