A great, great story embodying the now-gone boom days: Louis Vuitton teamed up with Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami for an exhibit, with a pricey store. And the "prints" were just leftover scraps! Very fitting:

The slack economy is costing America more than $1 trillion per year in lost output. But there's an upside: Great deals, on everything!

What a time to start selling $595 jeans. The free publicity potential is incredible. Across America, hacks are whipping out pocket calculators and saying, "Do you know what you could buy for $595??"

"This is a tough time for the very wealthy," begins a story about how "ultra-luxury" auto brands are confident that their customers will survive. Meanwhile, the American dream is now "to be a renter!"

Remember the iconic New York Magazine sign on Madison and 49th? Now it's a Burberry sign. Metaphor contest! We say "The triumph of the fetish over the fetishist." Sad for history. [Racked; Click to enlarge.]

Washington has three sad "social" magazines: Washington Life, Modern Luxury's DC, and Jason Binn's Capitol File. We can't believe all three are still publishing. And Obama had them all over for tea!

That big Yves Saint Laurent art auction certainly has saved the art world. By proving that the dumb money is still out there. That $28 million chair was just one of the craziest buys:

Last Friday the New York Times sent out a memo telling staffers it's cracking down on expenses across the board. Sunday it published Maureen Dowd's (expensed) account of three days at Canyon Ranch resort. Huh:

What is it, exactly, that makes people unwisely crave luxury goods? Now we know: it's chocolate truffles. Science has proven it!:

The funny thing about the holiday season this year (besides the unreported death of Santa) is that Americans no longer have any money to buy expensive presents for each other—but magazines are plunging ahead with their year-end holiday gift guides as if everything was fine and dandy! Okay, that's not really "funny." Nor is it tragic, because hey, if these magazines want to walk themselves off a cliff, that's their business. It's ominous. What the hell does the future hold for luxury magazines in a world where those cutesy "Gifts Under $100" are a necessity, not a niche?

Design You Trust makes the bold assertion that Louis Vuitton is the "World's Most Counterfeited Fashion Brand." We're not sure. More than Chanel, or Gucci, or those garish knockoff Polo or Tommy Hilfiger shirts you see in street stalls in third-world markets? Finding out would be a good project for a grad student. Do something useful, kid. Regardless, LV certainly has the most creative knockoffs you'll ever see, outside of the seedier parts of Canal St. After the jump, four more of the worst Vuitton brand-jackings of all time:

Speaking of cratering ad sales in print media: Your favorite fashion magazine's historically huge September issue is going to be a bit lighter this year. Which god knows is a good thing for our nation's lower backs. Not so good, though, for the equally hardworking slaves to fashion that toil in the caves of Conde Nast and Hearst. W magazine lost 18% of its ads this September! (What, not enough girl-on-girl covers?) And almost all of their brethren are suffering, too. Is it finally a backlash against ostentatious luxury in lean times? Not at all, actually. It's not the luxury companies that are cutting back on their ads, you see; Oscar de la Renta, for example, increased his ad spending 15% to bring you news of his new $5,000 handbags. Rather, it's "midtier marketers" like bebe and Nordstrom's that are responsible for the decline. So while fashion magazines are totems for a certain segment of the overclass, their suffering is not a sign of fewer rich people. Rather, it's yet another indicator of the decline of the aspirational middle class. As goes W magazine, so goes the American dream.

Sharon Stone has finally apologized for her "inappropriate" comment that the recent massive Chinese earthquake was a product of "bad karma" for the country for its treatment on Tibet. She's sorry, okay! Nevertheless, fashion house Christian Dior announced that it's pulling all of its ads featuring the actress from all department stores, and the entire country of China. Though the comment itself was stupid, Stone's hasty retreat from her brash Tibet-championing—and Dior's even harsher public rebuke of her—are a great illustration of what is becoming the New China Rule: "Do Not Talk About The New China Rule." It's been de rigeur for top stars to prove their class by endorsing luxury brands, and to prove their morality by pontificating about Tibet. But guess what: pretty soon you're going to have to pick one or the other, Hollywood. And it's not looking good for the Dalai Lama.

Viral marketing: an ostentatious and mysterious way to grab buzz, but ultimately futile when it comes to measurable results that benefit you in the real world. Which makes it exactly the same as luxury clothing. Which may be why luxury brands from Cartier to Prada are now trying to make cute little viral YouTube videos, just like every other company in the world. Do rich, exclusive consumers, who are the prime targets of these brands, really spend their time clicking on YouTube links of amusing commercials? We think not. Which makes this entire trend a mystifying waste of time and resources, just like luxury clothing. Full circle and all that. After the jump, a Sergio Rossi viral video of shoes from different social classes making sweet, sweet love. Luxuriously!

Hunter College, the luxury brand Coach, fraudulent PR campaigns, and dishonest corporate collaboration with academia are the topics of the day today. Important topics! Adweek has just come out with a long investigative piece on a Coach-sponsored PR class at Hunter, which reeks of impropriety and dishonesty, and ended up tangling a bunch of college kids up in a fake online PR blog that makes them all look like a bunch of shady, dishonest undercover marketing hacks. "I knew a lot of hell would break loose about the class. And it did," said the teacher. Indeed. The condensed version of the whole sordid tale, after the jump.

See these flip-flops? They're not just any flip-flops. They're high fashion, "Married to the Mob" flip-flops, and they cost $42. Can you spot the reason why this is stupid? That's right: you pay ten times what you would pay for a plain pair of flip-flops, in order to have a brand name which is covered by your foot when you are wearing them. I imagine fashion snobs must just hang these flip-flops jauntily over their shoulder instead of slipping them on their feet, so that the logo can shine freely. In fact, the entire idea of paying extra for name-brand flip-flops is a bit ridiculous. But the price tag can get much, much worse than $42. Allow us introduce you to PechePlatinum—the "World's Most Expensive Flip-Flops."

If there's one thing a mobile phone does not need, it's a "Philosophy." If there's another thing a mobile phone does not need, it's a luxury brand above and beyond whatever the brand is of the actual phone manufacturer. Of course this means that today any asshole with $550 burning a hole in his pocket can buy a Samsung phone by Giorgio Armani. Has Armani suddenly hired a team of engineers who have built a revolutionary new microchip that maximizes the phone's performance? No, Armani has done what he does best: Print his name in little letters on the phone, then wildly increase the price. This type of product's success (still going strong after six months) says a lot about the human need for validation through conspicuous consumption. But more importantly, it says that any old nonsensical piece of marketing copy can now be passed off as a statement of "Philosophy":

The question weighing on the mind of the print media at large is, "In what month will I be getting laid off?" But in the luxury print media sector, the question is more like, "Will our readers be buying more, or fewer, private planes this year? And when should I buy mine?" As hard as it is for crusading journalism school grads to admit, magazines targeting upscale readers—a polite term for "rich Wall Street bastards"—will naturally attract more premium advertising, and are usually better positioned to ride out any crazy economic fluctuations than other magazines whose readers are quicker to go broke. Or are they?

It's bad enough that we have to be subjected to the ordeal of companies using our dead heroes to endorse their brands. Now, the real marketing coup is securing an actual (live) world leader to wear your luxury shit for free. French president Nikolas Sarkozy has a Rolex and aviator shades. Puppet Russian president Dmitry Medvedev flaunted his collection of Franck Muller watches in a magazine spread. Socialista Venezuelan populist Hugo Chavez likes designer clothes and jewelry. Even George-freaking-Dubya goes to a special Texas cobbler for his precious "cowboy" boots [Guardian via Agenda Inc.]. Christ, next thing you know world leaders will be turning into luxury pitchmen to finance their cushy retirements! Oh yea, that already happened.

Heroic woman of dance Madonna has been working for almost a year on a documentary about the obscure African nation of Malawi, her pet cause ever since she adopted a son from the country in 2006. The Material Girl tells Interview magazine (in editor Ingrid Sischy's farewell issue) that, at the time, she "didn't know where Malawi was." That's what makes adoption logistics so difficult [NYP]! To further help the imperiled nation, Madonna teamed up with the good people at Gucci for an ostentatious luxury fundraiser that coincidentally also helped to promote the opening of Gucci's flagship store in NYC. And now it's clear that Gucci's commitment has not flagged—they're selling some items that will be very useful for Malawi-bound "jungle doctors":