Of course the creative underclass loves to hate on the creative overclass—embodied by Conde Nast—in public. But in private, everyone wants to get to Conde Nast. Or at least a Conde Nast expense account. Well, give up the dream, kids. The old folks got all that money already, and with 25% cuts coming down the pike, there's none left for you. Matthew Flamm says "The cuts could begin to take effect as early as mid- to late October and will continue into next year." Meaning if you haven't tasted the Conde bounty yet, you probably never will. At least not the way it should be. At least they're going out on an appropriately profligate note, sez the NYT:

For example, on Oct. 13, the men's magazine GQ will host a party in Washington to promote its list of powerful capital players, to appear in its November issue. The party is upscale: it will be held at the 701 Restaurant, known for its caviar and live piano music.

That is not the only expense involved. Several editorial employees will travel from New York for the evening. And they received an e-mail message recently reminding them to limit their expenses for the night - to $1,000 a person.

Once that would have been sad for an entirely different reason. Now it's sad like how revolutionaries probably get a tiny bit sad when they rush into a dictator's big golden palace built on the blood of the people and tear it down, because hey, even they have to admit that it was a nice palace.

Coming over the next year, it's safe to assume: Lower kill fees, no free lunches, fewer freelancers, cheaper consultants, fewer towncars for the mastheads, more ads sold below rate card, layoffs, and a drastic reduction in that good old fashioned Conde Nast luxurious wastefulness.
And they won't be hiring you. Or us.

[Except maybe at the unscathed New Yorker? No, they won't either. Pic: Getty.]

Yea, so basically the WSJ has a very disheartening report saying guys are out buying beds and shit that cost tens of thousands of dollars so that they can have shit like wine coolers and TVs and safes built into the bed, cause who doesn't need that, right?

He delighted in showing her that the TV could be lowered into the footboard via remote, and he let her pick out the color and pattern of the mattress fabric. His wife declined to comment.

The silent treatment already. Oh dude you are going to be buying so much fancy shampoo forever to make up for that one. Real smooth, in your Batman bed. Awesome, yea right. Fancy beds, Jesus Christ.

It really is a sad tableau. [Copyranter at Animal]

Here we have the Album de Famiglia design collection customizable cardboard cot (brown), a.k.a. a cardboard box. No, really:

Delivered flat-packed, very easy to assemble...You can decide to keep it plain - simply stamped with the brand's logo on the side - for the super chic industrial living look. Or you can customize it, paint it, or simply decorate it with your child's name.

Hey, do whatever you want to it. It's a cardboard box! Neal Pollack probably has dozens of these. Rock-n-roll, yall. Yours for only $255. Fits little Lorenzo and his evil twin.
[via Mamaista]

A tipster points us to Matt's Facebook page, where he's telling everyone about his upcoming trip to the Greek Isle of Mykonos! "This is a villa that comes with a house staff and is all inclusive," he notes. The packages that Matt links to range from $2,750- $4,200 per week.

When Matt's story originally came out, there was a flood of comments accusing him of lying in one way or another. Nothing ever contradicted the original reporting on his story, though, as far as we know—and that reporting concluded that his story was true. All we know: Big fundraiser by Matt's friends to replace his trashed stuff, then a month or two passes, then, Mykonos!

[Also this calls Mykonos "the ultimate gay destination," but every straight couple we know who's been married in the past two years has gone to Mykonos. What's the deal with Mykonos?]

What's the problem with GM declaring bankruptcy, besides the solidifying of our hollow fears that America's empire is crumbling? It's that we don't even have enough bankruptcy lawyers to make it happen. Not enough bankruptcy lawyers! We'll be forced to outsource our own demise! At last, this is the final indignity of the recession, is it not?

No, of course not. There will be many more. That good old American refusal to accept defeat is now coming back to bite us right on our defeated asses. For example: Luxury hotels like the Four Seasons (okay it's Canadian, JUST AN EXAMPLE) refuse to cut back on amenities or lower room rates, because "doing so may hurt the brand's image." And there's this: "To add insult to injury, in the current climate no business traveler wants to put the name of a high-end resort on an expense report." Now, one might say: Lower the rates and then business travelers won't have to worry about staying there so much, problem solved!

Just goes to show you don't understand the science of branding, you cheap whore. The Four Seasons isn't afraid to go bankrupt to protect its bankrupt brand image—there are no lawyers to do the bankruptcy, anyhow, remember? And screw customers—they're all just trying to use something once and return it, anyhow. When the nuclear winter of this recession has passed, brands will be the last remnants of our once-mighty culture. Brands. And Pringles, which are made from the toughest substances known to man.
[Pic via]

The WSJ finds that the comically oversized pendant industry may be in peril:

"A lot of these rappers simply don't have the money for real stuff anymore," says Jason Arasheben, who crafts custom jewelry for wealthy clientele, including Saudi royals and Hollywood movie stars, at his California boutique called Jason of Beverly Hills. "It's to the point where they are wearing imitation jewelry, and that's ridiculous."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Consider what's at stake here: we would lose the opportunity to idly play "Who has the most idiotic chain?" (Answer: Rick Ross, pictured, with himself as a pendant). Luckily for rappers, there is a template to follow in this situation. Country music has known how to combine flashy style and low cash for decades. Meet the future of hip hop fashion totems:


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

[WSJ. Related: Since when did the WSJ start hiring reporters who can casually use hip hop slang in stories and sound competent, rather than sounding humorously stiff like, you know, WSJ reporters trying to use hip hop slang in stories? WHAT'S THE WORLD COMING TO YO?]

LV's little "boutique" next to the Murakami exhibit in LA sold handbags and limited edition prints and such. But now a guy is suing LV, because he found out that his $6,000 print was—wait for it—leftover handbag fabric, that was just stretched on a frame and mounted.

The point of installing a boutique inside the "Copyright Murakami" exhibition at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary building was to highlight the Japanese pop artist's trademark blurring of the lines between art and commerce, MOCA officials said at the time of the 2007-08 show. But Arthur contends that selling repurposed handbag material as 500 collectible art prints priced at $6,000 and $10,000 crossed the line from commerce to fraud because Louis Vuitton allegedly hid the fact that the prints were made from the same fabric sheets as the Murakami-designed bags and accessories selling nearby for almost $1,000.

Bwahahaha. Here's the line between art and commerce: Art is ripping you off ten times more! This whole "Art as luxury materialism" embrace is just blech, so no tears for any asshole who dropped 10K on LV fabric laid out in a frame. Let's pretend this was all an object lesson in the perils of luxury fixation.
And that shit is ugly.
[LAT. Pic via]

It would take three years to get the economy back up and running 100% if the recession ended tomorrow. And you know that's not gonna happen! So you have plenty of time to take advantage of what were formerly trappings of luxury and are now cheap! cheap! cheap!

Art, for example. Prices are down 35%! So many rich people have been forced to liquidate their Warhols at the bottom of the market that there's never been a better time to become a collector. Also makes good kindling!

And while you're spending, why not pick up some gold? It's at its lowest point in months. Sorry, survivalists! Supplement that with some cheap California bonds, desperate new stock issues, AIG's asset management division, and government-owned black tar heroin, and you've saved so much money that you won't be forced to enroll your kids in a 'virtual school' just to save on pencil costs.

We can't afford not to have a recession!
[Pic via. How much is a trillion dollars? See here!]

You could buy one bathroom tile in Bernie Madoff's $11 million Florida mansion. You could buy almost one ten thousandth of one percent of the $700 million cost overruns by the NYC education department in the past two years. You could buy almost one five millionth of Blackstone's new $3 billion fund to buy up companies that are crumbling, cheap.

You could buy some stock—the market's back to 8000 again! You could buy 11 barrels of oil, before the price rises again. You could buy a drink for one of the thousand Swiss Re workers who just got laid off. You could buy a couple hours of a high-priced deal lawyer's time, which would make him happy, cause he isn't doing shit these days. You could buy a gun.

Or you could do the right thing and buy 1190 copies of the Post. They need it. This 'expensive jeans' story can only do so much.

Sure, we've all been concerned about what this recession will mean for Ferrari, Maserati, and other patriotic European "ultra expensive" (direct quote!) car manufacturers. Well, have no fear: Porsche's net profit in the first half rose strongly, and auto execs are expressing the confidence that will get us all through this mess:

[Ferrari's North American chief Maurizio] Parlato says he's not too worried about the attacks on Wall Street bonuses and the troubles in the financial industry. "Our customer base is not mainly those people," he says. "Those people are quick buyers" who favor other brands that don't require a waiting list.
"Our people," Mr. Parlato says, "have serious money."

And thank god for that. Among those with less-than-serious money, the American dream has gone from "owning a house in the suburbs" to "subletting a small efficiency in a subdivided foreclosed house in the suburbs." Which is okay, because plummeting oil prices will help them save money on their lengthy commutes to their new jobs at the Orange Julius, where they are working, pluckily, to make up their 14% stock market losses in the first quarter.

America!

The Reverend Moon-owned Washington Times, a noted newspaper-of-the-working man, is of course shocked that a liberal who claims to like poor people would have these socialite leeches skulking around The People's House. We're shocked that he thought any of those not-long-for-this-media-environment mags would even be worthy of his attention.

Just about every single word of the Times "exclusive" is hilarious in a terribly hacky New York Post-for-beginners attempted class rage way, so you should probably just read the whole thing. Like it derisively calls someone "chic and soignee."

So! The editors of those three magazines went to the White House for a meeting about how the Obamas can get everyone in DC's "glittery social scene" to, who knows, lobby their congress members for health care reform, or something. Hypocrisy!

While publicly identifying with the nation's have-nots, the Obama administration has been cultivating the Beltway social elite behind the scenes.

But... why?

The White House is "identifying taste makers in order to help create grass-roots interest in some of the programs they are working on," said Washington Life's Michael Clements, who attended the meeting. "They wanted to introduce themselves. It was certainly a departure from previous administrations."

Haha Washington Life's Michael Clements, who attended the meeting, said "my magazine totally attracts taste-makers and I have the attention of the president PLEASE PLEASE ADVERTISE PLEASE."

The outreach to the luxury lifestyle glossies, which cater to the region's highest socioeconomic strata with knowing coverage of everything from the choicest real estate and most exclusive parties to the plushest resorts and spas, is not the only recent evidence that the Obama administration is eager to forge ties with the nation's social and style arbiters.

Because if you are a liberal president you can only hang out with coal miners, children from crumbling schools, and unemployed RV manufacturers.

And you know it's in everyone's interest here to pretend Washington has an interesting and glamorous "social scene" or whatever, but it really doesn't, it's a bunch of wonks and hacks and a million journalists and a couple rich old ladies and a lot of douchebags. So, thanks for the attempted "Washington lifestyle magazine credibility bailout" here, Mr. President, but nothing's gonna save "the Young and the Guest List."

"An early 18th-century Gobelins tapestry of a Brazilian native potentate being carried through a jungle in a hammock fetched 553,000 euros yesterday. The 12-foot-high hanging had been expected to fetch 100,000 euros to 150,000 euros.
'That was a crazy price,' said Machault, who specializes in tapestries. 'The top of the tapestry was restored and it was worth half that.'"


"A telephone bidder paid a 10 times-estimate 46,600 euros for a lump of black quartz that had been owned by Saint Laurent.
Similar mineral samples can be bought in specialist stores for less than 500 euros, said dealers."


"Saint Laurent's silver fetched 19.9 million euros against an upper estimate of 7.1 million euros on Feb. 24. All 111 lots sold." [Like this table service for $405k—four times the high estimate!]


"A 17th-century German silver-gilt ceremonial cup sold to the Paris-based dealers Galerie J. Kugel for 853,000 euros, more than eight times the low estimate."


And these two bronze Chinese sculptures, which were looted, were sold over the objections of the Chinese government for $39 million. Ain't that something? [Bloomberg]

MoDo is in top, infuriating, faux-self-loathing form. She spends the first several paragraphs wondering rhetorically whether anyone could justify spending thousands of dollars at a pricey luxury spa in Miami Beach during these hard times. Then she goes ahead and does. With the NYT picking up the tab, and paying her for her precious insight as well, we have to assume.

My mom always warned me that there was something immoral about a $5 cup of coffee, a $1.75 bottle of water, a $27 fifth of bourbon and a $40 candle. I’m sure the $500 pizhichil massage (without tip) offered by Canyon Ranch would have appalled her. It made my friend Alessandra, who had the “body ritual,” featuring two masseuses squeezing pieces of linen dipped in “medicinal oil” all over her body for 80 minutes, cringe a bit as well. “I felt like a fat Mafioso being serviced by Thai hookers,” she confessed afterward.

Later MoDo gets more massages, drinks booze, and goes out the town with her "pal," the Miami police chief, all while chuckling about how disconcerting her situation is, but hey, she can't be stopped from partying! (Is this why people hate "snark?")

A 950-square-foot, one-bedroom Intracoastal suite starts at $350 a night; a 920-square-foot poolside suite with one king bed starts at $450; a 1,200-square-foot oceanfront suite with two bedrooms starts at $1,000.

Meanwhile, back on the other ranch:

The Times will not subsidize or reimburse the cost of food delivered to the newsroom for departmental or staff meetings, without approval from News Admin. This includes departments or bureaus charging to their P-cards or to the newspaper the cost of bagel runs, supplies of bottled water, catered luncheons or any group meals for their staffs, whether the department is ordering from outside caterers and restaurants, or the cafeteria on the 14th floor. If a department is having a luncheon meeting, for example, editors should encourage participants to brown bag, bring down their own food from the cafeteria or share the cost of outside delivery.

You can't put a price on quality travel journalism, people.

[NYT, NYO]

"Indulging in just one small chocolate truffle can induce cravings for more sugary and fatty foods—and even awaken a desire for high-end status products, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research."

That's right! The study showed that people who ate a chocolate truffle subsequently reported they wanted lots of pizza and other crappy foods, too. Those who resisted the truffle were like, "Nah, I'm cool." Truffle eaters also desired "status products" including Apple computers more, so beware of any store handing out free truffles, okay!

But look how suggestible we all are; sheep, the lot of us:

Once people felt their goals were met, they tended to reverse their behaviors. For example, when people who resisted the truffle were told they did a good job, they indicated that they desired fatty foods more than healthy foods.

Reverse psychology, people. It works. [Science Daily]

Oprah's O magazine has a whole bunch of the billionaire cult leader's favorite under-$100 gifts. Like $99 moisturizer. For the frugal!

Or take InStyle's advice and spend your monthly gas budget on a jar of wrinkle serum!

For the truly broke, how about Ladies Home Journal's thrifty gift guide suggestion of "a cold and sinus soak." Help your loved ones maintain their holiday sinus health in anticipation of a new year filled with no health insurance! .

Everything is either outrageous or depressing. What we're oh-so-subtly getting at is the fact that magazines that have always existed for the sole purpose of pimping too-expensive items out to an aspiration audience have not even begun to change their editorial mission in response to our new, dead economy. And we're talking about a lot of magazines. Everything from Vogue to Real Simple. Any magazine based on telling people what to buy is now facing a world where the old business plan won't necessarily work; but none of them, as far as we can tell, have a great backup plan to save themselves.

It's like any rich person forced to downgrade their own lifestyle: it's hard on the ego. The same goes for magazines. Many will cling to the fading idea of their own place in the luxury hierarchy rather than start chasing after lower-class dollars. In this version of the economy, there should only be about a third as many "luxury," acquisitive titles as there were two years ago, during the boom times. The remaining two thirds can either do the smart thing and recast themselves immediately as friends to the plebes; or they can fight for the few luxury dollars left, and probably go bankrupt in the process.

[Design You Trust via Cityfile]

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.

[WSJ]

Everybody wants IN to the Chinese market. This particularly goes for high-end luxury brands, which are slobbering over the prospect of Chinese people—more than a billion of them!—soon having enough money to start buying their products. As the country gains a stronger middle and upper class, Dior and Armani and Chanel and Vuitton and all their friends are counting on a huge new customer base. Politics be damned!

And all the stars who model for, receive freebies from, or endorse all these brands? They're going to have to shut their traps about Tibet. China accepts no dissent on the issue. The Chinese government will happily blacklist any company foolish enough to publicly raise the issue, and no company would ever do such a thing. Nor will they allow their endorsers to. It's as simple as that. Every major company on earth has, thus far, folded in the face of Chinese totalitarianism, because the promise of their untapped customer base is too good to sacrifice for an abstract political cause. The shareholders want profits, not slogans.

So here's a prediction: In the future, the only Hollywood stars to loudly adopt the Tibet issue will be those who are too old or unpopular to land the juiciest luxury endorsements. Or maybe some of them will willingly ditch their endorsements in order to continue arguing for the cause? Ha ha! Yea, we hope so too. Maybe Richard Gere will stick it out.

Think that's cynical? The same thing has already happened in the sports world. NBA superstar Lebron James refused to sign a letter from ten of his own teammates condemning China's business connection to the atrocities in Darfur. Why? Because he has a $100 million contract with Nike, and the Olympics are coming up in Beijing, and Nike wants a big piece, as well as big peace. Most other big name athletes have already fallen in line as well.

Hopefully the Dalai Lama can do without Beverly Hills.

[Photo via Getty]