Luxury houses transformed from artisanal elite workshops into conglomerate-controlled mass producers.

Evidence

These brands began in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as artisanal workshops catering to the European elite: Hermès’s horse saddles, Louis Vuitton’s travel trunks, Chanel’s haute couture for society women. By the late twentieth century, they were mostly consolidated under publicly traded conglomerates like LVMH, Kering, and Richemont. They made goods at price points for all consumers at giant margins, facilitated by moving most production to Chinese factories. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 757

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the historical baseline of luxury brands that the omnivore monoculture flattens.