Have we never heard of the old adage, money can’t buy good taste?

Pharrell Williams and his Millionaire Speedy. Photo: Getty Images

By Raiment Young

In last August’s issue of British GQ, which featured Pharrell Williams on the cover, Louis Vuitton’s singer-turned-designer confidently said something about “growth and taste”. I did not think he meant the now-trending LV Millionaire Speedy. But as it turned out, he did. There is no irony in the bag’s name, of course. The target audience is clear, and Mr Williams is not bashful to show us that he is creator and user. This Speedy may, as Mr Williams had hoped, help LV grow, but I’m not sure how the taste levels of their products could be augmented. The bag, a riff on an LV classic, is not only obscenely expensive (US$1 million or S$1.36 million), it is vulgar too, if we go by the naming. For Mr Williams (or, perhaps, LV’s marketing department too), stating the obvious and offering a product of unambiguous extravagance are advantageous to the brand’s future.

If I had a million dollars, my money would not be lured by the purchase of the bag (in SGD, that would not be enough). There is something very distasteful about anything that one carries, which is known at large as a “trophy” buy. I have too often seen people carrying ludicrously expensive bags that have nothing to do with their very turnout: no overpriced shoes to match, nor attire, nor carriage. The bag is enough to give the user’s so-called status a shout-out. Social standing, of course, matters especially in fashion. Style is immaterial. Expensive may say—however inaccurately—exclusive, but it is no indicator of how compelling the product which bears the exorbitant price tag is. The Millionaire Speedy is not a new silhouette, but is made with novel brightly-dyed crocodile skin and printed with LV’s gaudy Monogram, and comes furnished with hardware in gold and decorated with diamonds. And, available to a select few then they place an order for it. Yes, it’s that kind of bag.

There is something very distasteful about anything that one carries, which is known at large as a “trophy” buy

Whether ‘It’ bags still matter or have become social-status relics, people still buy them, and the dearer they are, the more appealing. Luxury brands have been increasing the prices of their bags unabashedly, but that has not put a damper on appetites for those pieces that shout their provenance and price. Demand escalates together with skyrocketing prices. Luxury brands have traditionally used branding and visibility to justify their consumption, yet despite having achieved the desired status, it was not enough to maintain the discernability, they have to amp it up. Changing consumer taste commensurate with that and fashion folkways have come to value trash than dash. Users of the unmistakably expensive show off their social values that come with brandishing the bags that brag. Even the very young, in school uniforms, tog their explicitly LV bags with the same insouciance of one carrying supermarket bags. It is hardly extraordinary then that Pharrell Williams, an LV employee, would carry a bag of his own conception, produced by the company he is obligated to tout.

Mr Williams would not debut at LV discreetly or spend his days there without drawing attention to himself. Could this be part of his contract? There is, as I see it, a Beng sensibility about Mr Williams’s personal style: All show and, as it’s tempting to say, no substance. I have not even pointed out the garish, egg-shaped sunglasses that the late Dame Edna would heartily approve. But it is the bag that he carries, in that sunny colour, that is drawing the raves. A million-dollar bag somehow reminds me of a gold toilet bowl—just as repugnant, just as Trumpian. Mr Williams is, of course, the first to be seen with the Millionaire Speedy. It was materialism that could not be obscured from full public view, and displayed so as to engineer a crave. But even in China, that conspicuousness is now downplayed as there is the fear that showing off your riches might get you censured, if not censored. The bag is possibly not targeted at the Chinese in the mainland. But elsewhere, Pharrell Williams keeps good company.