Pi-Consulting

Economic downturn? What economic downturn? Paris Hilton went on a New Year shopping spree in Sydney, Australia, spending $4,000 in less than an hour. The world’s news media erupted, fingering the self-publicizing socialite for “callous disregard” of the deprivations that ordinary folk were going through. This kind of negative coverage has resulted in a furtive change of behavior among some shopaholics who still have plenty in the bank. Kathy Fuld, the wife of the deposed Lehman Brothers chief Dick Fuld, seems to have salvaged much of the wealth he amassed before the firm’s demise, including the $13 million home he recently sold her for $10. Anxious not to draw enemy fire while trawling the mall, she has reportedly evolved a new form of “stealth shopping,” instructing sales clerks in ritzy apparel stores like Hermès to put her merchandise in plain shopping bags rather than the orange ones with the conspicuous Hermès brand name on them. It’s the return of the “plain brown wrapper”. As New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd acerbically comments about the anonymous shopping bags, “Americans are suffering from luxury shame. …A practice once reserved for men’s magazine pornography is now being used to mask the ‘pornography’ of spending”. Source: NYT