"Nowness is a brand of the luxury group LVMH. Nowness is an editorial website that covers the full spectrum of luxury and the art of living. Nowness is curated by an international team of editors as an essential reference point and resource, setting a new standard for experiencing high-end fashion, culture and global events digitally. NOWNESS IS AN IMMEDIATE AND LASTING IMPRESSION. Ever evolving. Forward thinking. Nowness presents a highly creative and technologically advanced approach to showcasing the best of fashion, art, culture and travel. Each day, Nowness introduces you to a new world of ideas, delivering multi-faceted stories and exclusive content. Nowness is an innovative space where ideas are first and foremost."
How is 'the art of living' creating needs we didn't have before, separating us into those who have and those who don't, the beautiful and the ugly, and so making people unhappy stressing the material difference? How can a bag be worth a year's rent in Tokyo?
But they are good, very good, and not only because of the quality of the authors involved in these little exquisite pieces. If you read this far you already suspect how I feel about luxury products. There's no way I would ever buy a, let's say, Louis Vuiton bag or Prada trousers. I don't usually like what they do and when I do, I instantly dislike it when I see the label. Call me a moralist, I don't need, don't want that kind of status. I find it vulgar, which ironically gives me a status. That being said -and that's why I say they're good-, I found myself thinking 'I want those shades' halfway through the next video. So they're good, they're awesome at what they do, because they are reaching an audience that otherwise wouldn't ever think of buying their stuff using a very sofisticated marketing strategy. But fashion should be something else.
I didn't know what was behind these creations when I saw this little film by Lisa Eisner, which, although not to my knowledge at first, is a very effective Oliver Peoples ad, but now it's too late: I want those shades. I don't want them because they're Oliver Peoples, I want them because of the beautiful images and song by Devendra Banhart, with Devendra, his real girlfriend and their intimacy featured in it, a kind of arty 'I'm a celebrity, get me out of here!' exhibitionism. Art at the service of the worst of capitalisms. Antony and the Johnsons is also collaborating with another song. Alternative artists at the service of the worst mainstream. It's a very low blow, it really is. Watch the video and tell me it's not.
But let's just imagine that somehow I end up owning those glasses. We would have to add the concept of 'Programed Obsolescence' to the creation of irrational wants and needs marketing and publicity install upon us. What does that mean then? Well it means that even if I get what I want, what I am pushed to believe I want and need, it won't last long so I will have to get it, buy it again.
The design of a product is agreed by manufacturers and programed not to last long. And so we are chained, it's never ending.
I have a computer, it's 7 years old and it doesn't work anymore although I had the hard drive replaced once. I also had to replace the battery and the mic. Most of us would think, 'Come on, it's 7 years old, of course it doesn't work! Buy a new one!'. The thing is that there is a light bulb in Livemore, California, that's been working for over 100 years. This is no mystery, nothing to do with the unknown. We know how to make consumer goods last. I could replace the hard drive again but it would cost me the same as a new computer with more gadgets and applications I don't know, but that I certainly need. So there you go, stress on the status + obsolescence = perennial consumerism and chronic unhappiness.
Here, a very interesting documentary on obsolescence. In Spanish but with many subtitled bits in different languages.
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