Luxury Briefing.

European rights are airborne as I write this, finally, mercifully, heading toward their destinations around a globe shrouded in volcanic debris and vapour. When you eventually read this, possibly through a microscopic veil of silica ash particles, all the more fall out will be palpable – yes, from a world part mesmerised, part traumatized by its environmental events – but also from the next news cycle… British election results… latest Vatican pronouncements… which Wall Street banks are now under government investigation, etc… as the world – for now – keeps going round and round.

The shaking and quaking of spring 2010 may seem endless but luxury is on the rebound right? Sure, Tom Ford was stuck in London, annoyingly unable to return home in time to receive an award, welcome to the New Normal. But how else is Big Luxury being affected by the global tumult?

First quarter numbers are way up, as further roll-outs gain pace and momentum. At least one customer base – bankers – is enjoying a full recovery, with some new records being set for even huger payouts in 2009. As reported recently, the top 25 hedge fund managers averaged a cool billion take-home pay. For the American big banks, the good ?nancial news just keeps coming. First quarter pro?ts ($3-4 billion) far outpaced even the perkiest expectations and continued upbeat signs are expected to activate a tsunami of consumer footfall.

Really? While the ?nancial industry – and its collateral service industries (which arguably luxury has become) – may be back from the brink and even staging an ascent to unprecedented new heights, there is a caldera of populism somewhere in this new topography rumbling and grumbling ominously. And in the shadow of that, many con?icting signs that former luxury customers, the very ones responsible for creating luxury into an industry before the recession, will be sloughed off in the formation process of this rocky new terrain.

Whereas there are continuing reports from retailers of modest increases in sales, and fewer late payments from credit card users, there are also reports showing a drop in borrowing on credit cards as well as a sharp increase in personal bankruptcies. And in a cheeky new trend, squatters in their own houses, who have stopped paying outsized mortgages to banks too overwhelmed by foreclosures to evict them, are saving for much more reasonably priced new digs. Notably in a recent broadcast reporting on – possibly even inciting – such action, one interviewed squatter was dressed in old Burberry, probably shopped from her closet, a tartan-draped, and by some de?nitions, homeless, symbol of the recent past.

So who will replace the migrating armies of the natty Noughties in luxury’s next campaign for market share? Reading more closely through the positive results of recent weeks, the answer seems to lie in luxury’s lockstep assault on the BRIC economies and the presumptive desire for baubles and labels therein. Really?

Luxury is just going to repeat everything it already knows how to do, maybe throw in some social media and claim new conquests? Um, is there a contingency plan? Is the strategy too big to fail? And what about us Westerners, feeling like dumb blondes dropped cold for an exotic new beauty? Early bestsellers in China are reported to be gold watches and liquor. Be careful of creating the tipsy new CHAV, or CHinese Accessory Victim.

Back in Iceland, the land of ash blondes (God Bless!) where only months ago we witnessed an altogether different kind of meltdown than the recent awesome spectacle, there is much to be observed from the multitude of internet photos in circulation. Most stirring are the shots of lighting bolts amidst the explosive eruptions, suggesting perhaps a transformative connection between roiling earth energies and an omnipresent celestial charge. Luxury strategists and banking titans might examine these images for more inspiration than their industries presently seems to be exhibiting. Really.

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