She gives us some sharply observed profiles of figures like Miuccia Prada, who was a Communist with a doctorate in political science when she took over her familys small luxury goods business in 1978, and the business tycoon Bernard Arnault, who relentlessly built LVMH into a luxury monolith with dozens of brands (including Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Dior)sold around the world. Traveling from French perfume laboratories to Las Vegas shopping malls to assembly-line factories in China, she traces the evolving face of the luxury goods business, from design through marketing to showroom sales. Thomas who has been the cultural and fashion writer for Newsweek in Paris for 12 years has written a crisp, witty social history thats as entertaining as it is informative.

With Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, Ms. According to the fashion reporter Dana Thomas, that Prada backpack was also the emblem of the radical change that luxury was undergoing at the time: the shift from small family businesses of beautifully handcrafted goods to global corporations selling to the middle market a shift from exclusivity to accessibility, from an emphasis on tradition and quality to an emphasis on growth and branding and profits.

It was hip, modern, lightweight and at $450 expensive, but not as expensive as the stratospherically priced bags made by Herms and Chanel. Skip to next paragraph Back in the late 1980s, the Prada backpack made out of black or tobacco-brown parachute fabric trimmed in leather became the it bag for many would-be fashionistas. The Devil Wears Herms (He Bought It at the Caesars Palace Mall in Las Vegas)

How luxury lost its luster