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" By the end of this year, we know for certain that a few things will come to pass: A millionaire will have been elected president of the United States; the national unemployment rate will hover at an uncomfortably high level; and American men will have spent more money on personal luxury goods \u2014 watches, shoes, jewelry, and big-ticket clothing items \u2014 than in any other single year in history. More than during the Greed Is Good days of the 1980s. More than during the Internet boom of the 1990s. More than during the conspicuous-consumption craze of the 2000s, with luxury powerhouses like Richemont (home to the likes of Cartier, Dunhill, and IWC), LVMH (which owns Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Berluti, Bulgari, and TAG Heuer, among others), PPR (see: Gucci, Brioni, Bottega Veneta, and more), and Herm\u00E8s all reporting sustained double-digit growth and record profits in 2012.  Of course, it&amp;#039;s not just happening in America \u2014 China, India, and other emerging world markets are the primary engines of growth. What&amp;#039;s remarkable about the strength of the U. S. and European markets, though, is that it&amp;#039;s flying in the face of political and socioeconomic turmoil. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re all kind of scratching our heads,&amp;quot; says Omar Saad, a managing director and luxury-goods analyst at ISI Group. &amp;quot;Across the board, all these companies are seeing a personal-luxury-goods resurgence in the United States, even though bankers aren&amp;#039;t making as much money as they used to.&amp;quot; Saad points to three possible explanations for the uptick. One: what he calls &amp;quot;the store of wealth&amp;quot; factor \u2014 real estate&amp;#039;s hardly a sure thing anymore, the stock market is still a gamble, but many luxury goods (especially ones that don&amp;#039;t reflect trends) will hold their value come what may. Two: the growth of industries outside of finance, especially the tech and energy sectors. &amp;quot;This year, the earnings of all the S&amp;amp;amp;P companies added together are going to be higher than they&amp;#039;ve ever been,&amp;quot; says Saad. &amp;quot;And while the stock market isn&amp;#039;t ripping, it&amp;#039;s at a pretty high level.&amp;quot; The newly rich, if not the already rich, continue to get richer, which leads to Saad&amp;#039;s third theory: &amp;quot;There seems to be a cultural shift among the wealthy. During the past decade, people seemed to care more about having a huge house, even though they might have only used two rooms. Now, after the events of the past few years, there&amp;#039;s more personal satisfaction being gained from being well dressed or having a nice watch.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s not all ladies-be-shopping, either: Per a study in late 2011 by Bain and Co.&amp;#039;s luxury-goods division, men are actually outspending women in many categories, including shoes. (Men. Shoes. Elton John himself couldn&amp;#039;t have seen this coming.) Tom Kalenderian, the men&amp;#039;s-wear chief at Barneys New York, sees most of his customers drawn to lower-key, logo-free luxury items that just a few years ago would&amp;#039;ve been passed over in favor of something flashier. More than anything, he believes, his customers &amp;quot;want to feel like they own something of value and quality that gives them a lot of satisfaction. But they also want to use it to tell the world something about themselves, so when a guy thinks, I don&amp;#039;t need a logo to tell someone who I am, there is a certain confidence to that.&amp;quot; And while he sees a surge in interest in leather goods, &amp;quot;if there&amp;#039;s a logo on the bag,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s probably so subtle that nobody can see it.&amp;quot; Call it the One Percent Paradox: I&amp;#039;m going to spend more to look like I&amp;#039;m spending less. And this shift in consumer sensibility \u2014 a reflection, perhaps, of the current socioeconomic climate and a recognition, for certain, that coming off filthy rich ain&amp;#039;t what it used to be \u2014 is borne out in the fall collections. Designers seem to be collectively moving toward sober-looking clothing and accessories that epitomize what true luxury has always been about: good design and great craftsmanship that will pay benefits for years to come.  Nobody knows where the world economy is headed past November&amp;#039;s election, much less New Year&amp;#039;s Eve. But retailers and analysts predict Americans will continue to spend record sums on luxury, and designers will be there to meet the demand. In conversations with management at a few key global luxury brands, Saad says, &amp;quot;they&amp;#039;re talking about investing more in higher-quality products at higher price points.&amp;quot; This will keep skilled tailors and craftsmen, to say nothing of the older brands who employ them, in business for the foreseeable future. And it will keep some men \u2014 the ones who care to spend the extra money \u2014 in better, sharper, and longer-lasting clothes. Luxury doesn&amp;#039;t come cheap. It never has. But it took a global recession and a shaky recovery to realize that luxury, and everything it stands for, is often worth every penny.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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