Certainly it make us cringe to hear of bad service, absurd haughtiness, likely racism and the high-end faux pas, as Silva notes, of confusing exclusionary with exclusive. If Mr. Ford means to reinvent luxury, he seems on his way to doing it, tying it to outdated notions or wealth and considering his clientele clichés from television.

The real failure here, though, is that fussypants Ford thinks that building a brand is all about image. That’s the most outdated notion of all that is tripping him up. Great brands are rich with story and meaning to be sure, but those are just the means of making the brand promise. The real deal is in the details Ford claims to love so much; all great brands are operational masterworks. FedEx may move me from midnight blue to daylight orange (with niftily embedded forward-facing arrow) in their logo. And the company may inspire my worry to flee with promises of overnight delivery. But the folks in flight management, logistics, weather forecasting, labor relations and traffic routing are the ones who really make me smile.

Not so, apparently, at Chez Ford. If he means to reinvent luxury he should start with the end in mind. The ultimate luxury is effortless comfort and worry-free access to anything one wants, when one wants it. His store seems engineered to create effort, discomfort, worry and barriers to satisfaction. That’s quite a brand, intended or not, and not even one of Tom’s handmade beaver top hats can make such rudeness seem elegant.

In fact, what Ford is offering seems more costume than couture, more stage set than sartorial salon. It’s all an act (appropriate enough, one might be tempted to say, for a boy from Texas who became head of Gucci). Horacio Silva notes as much: his second visit, when all the boutique’s minions knew he was someone important, went swell.

Comments (3)

Name

Title

Comment

Add Comment