Radha Chadha, a leading brand consultant, likes to tell the story of a Hong Kong businessman, a watch fanatic, who does a lot of his work in China.
Despite owning a huge collection of exquisitely-crafted and rare timepieces, when he goes to China, he holds his nose and puts on a readily-available Rolex -- a nice watch but not one for the connoisseur.
He chooses the cheaper watch because the people he deals with would not recognize his favorite pieces and so would not treat him so well, Chadha said.
"He will downgrade momentarily for a profit," she said, smiling over a cup of tea in one of Hong Kong's ubiquitous upmarket shopping malls.
Asia is now the world's biggest market for luxury goods, accounting for 37 percent of the US$80 billion sector, Chadha calculated for her book The Cult of the Luxury Brand which she co-wrote with Paul Husband, a regional retail center consultant.
International luxury giants are now shifting their focus from boutiques in Paris and London to the massive malls of Asia to take advantage of booming demand.
Fashion mogul Donatella Versace recently announced plans for a nine-store expansion in China and Hong Kong by the end of this year, from her current five.
At last count, Hermes had seven stores in Hong Kong compared to just three in Paris and two in New York. Gucci has eight outlets in the city, compared to three in Milan.
Despite the vast array of options, shoppers still cannot get enough.
Louis Vuitton regularly forces people to queue outside its Hong Kong outlets to avoid overcrowding, something that customers appear happy to do.
Behind the regional spending spree -- which appears in no danger of abating despite the signs of consumer consumption slowdowns elsewhere in the world -- is an Asian culture of conformity as well as a simple need to show off success, Chadha said in an interview.
"They are very clear symbols and a visual language which is very easily interpreted. That is what it is about -- showing off your wealth," she said.
The Asian mania for luxury goods began in Japan as the country's economy began to take off during the 1980s.
The purveyors of luxury goods in Europe noticed their boutiques were flooded with wealthy Japanese tourists desperate to get their hands on the latest items to show off back home.
So the companies decided to open stores in Japan -- a decision that has generated spectacular results that are now resounding around the region.
The success was repeated as economies grew in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and, despite a little nationalist resistance, South Korea.
Now China is the focus of almost every luxury brand manager's attention, as the country's massive economic growth and the propensity of Chinese for ostentatious displays of wealth create a perfect market.
"China is all about spanking new money, there isn't any other kind there. Luxury brands are a very convenient way to let the world know about it," Chadha said. "If you look at mainland Chinese consumers, it is not really about esthetics at all, it is just about displaying money."
Indeed much of the demand in Hong Kong is fueled by Chinese shoppers, who flock to the territory to take advantage of lower prices, made possible by duty-free imports and the lack of a sales tax.
"Most of our customers are from China," said the manager of a French fashion boutique in the recently renovated and expanded Lee Gardens complex in Hong Kong's Causeway Bay shopping precinct.
"They care little for quality, and just buy the most expensive things available and carry their cash in suitcases," she said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Top brand names are salivating at the prospect of ever-increasing sales to newly enriched Chinese consumers eager to buy into the apparent status that brands carry.
"Desire for luxury goods is increasing month by month [in China]," Giancarlo Di Risio, Versace's chief executive, told the Financial Times last year.
David Rudlin, director of international markets at the Diamond Trading Company, the rough diamond distribution arm of De Beers, said in a recent interview: "In China, the sky's the limit if we can get what happened in Hong Kong [to be replicated there]."
The companies behind the big brands are finely tuned to hook new customers -- and to feed them up the chain.
Young office workers or junior managers will splash out several months of disposable income on a new handbag or a wallet or a pair of sunglasses, all resplendent with gaudy logos they proudly show off at every opportunity.
And with every salary hike, they are lured into buying more sophisticated and expensive products -- until they are enjoying private showings of new clothing ranges, being invited to glitzy store openings and winning coveted places on waiting lists for limited edition ranges.
But the Asian social pressure to conform is leading to some worrying fallout.
Chadha says that youngsters in Seoul will survive on nothing but instant noodles for months on end so they can save up for the latest handbag. And in Japan, some young teenagers have turned to prostitution or what is euphemistically called "paid dating" to fund their luxury habit.
"Japan is an extreme. You look at junior executives, they spend such an enormous proportion of their income on one odd purchase," she said. "In their head it does balance out, it is a social investment."
Whatever the social impact, the march of the luxury brand does not look like it can be halted any time soon. Brand managers are now sizing up the rapidly developing economies of India and Vietnam as their next target markets.
"Every day someone makes their first buy and enters the fold," Chadha said.
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