“…[S]omewhere in the loving confluence between the European class system and North American mass media, the modern prestige brand came into its own. No French clerk in the nineteenth century would have dreamed of owning an Hermés saddle or Louis Vuitton luggage, if, indeed, he had ever even heard those names. Yet by the early twentieth century, thanks largely to an emerging breed of magazines like Harper’s Bazaar, Women’s Wear Daily, and Vogue, aspirational middle-class Americans had not only heard the names, they wanted them for themselves. In the absence of a bona fide US aristocracy, the paraphernalia of the Old World ruling classes would do just as well.

For the manufacturers of luxury, this presented a dilemma. On the one hand, they wanted to expand, to cash in on the burgeoning demand. On the other hand, the nature of their goods – hand-crafted, finite production – made it near-impossible to meet that demand without compromise. Then they had a collective realization. While artisans and fine materials are limited in supply, the one thing that can be replicated ad infinitum is the brand: the name, the monogram, the insignia.” (Adbusters)