“Wine is bottled poetry” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. The Bangalore International Wine festival seemed like it chose to differ. A couple of us dropped by at the wine festival on an unusually hot Sunday afternoon hoping to catch some interesting photo ops. The “eclectic” event was a mish mash of food stalls (the ubiquitous CCD kinds),wine sampling events (where some sloshed visitors looked like they would leave no stone unturned in extracting the last penny of their visitor passes) and a.. err.. rock music show. Now I love rock, but a wine festival and rock music? Or maybe that was eclectic.
The British government added sparkling wine to it’s Consumer Price Index market basket of goods this month. “Sparkling wines are also being added due to their increased consumption” – added an official note. A case of a luxury good becoming a normal good? Flummoxed…eh? Rare occasions when I would want to gloat about the economist in me but shall spare you in peace. A luxury good, non technically speaking is what the poor cannot have and only the elite can. The funny thing about a luxury good is however, once it gets increasingly democratised, it ceases being one. Technology is a very good example. Even before you know it, that hottest gadget you got for yourself becomes a normal good. So much for social signalling!
So what does it take to know how hard it is to be immensely rich these days? Check out the Forbes' "Cost of Living Extremely Well Index". Its components include: Gucci loafers, one year at Harvard University, a night at a one-bedroom suite at the Four Seasons in New York, 1oz of Joy (a perfume by Jean Patou), Davidoff cigars, a Hermès calfskin bag and much more. Also, what matters is not just the good itself but under what brand it is being sold.
Recent research also suggests that luxury brands act like marketing placebos and could improve human performance! Think your photography ain’t good enough…maybe you should get the Canon EOS 5D Mark II!! (macro man fits the bill , Alleppey fellow travellers would agree:-0)). For those not so inflicted by such fallacies of human thought, there is always the inhouse photography expert..or better..a pirated version of photoshop:D. Okay photographers,we will debate on the “moralities” of photo editing next time!
Photo credits:Shireen