“Feeling powerless can trigger strong desires to purchase products that convey high status,” says a new study from the Journal on Consumer Research. Rob Walker wonders whether this will hold true this season. Everyone is cutting spending habits, but “if you asked consumers whether they’d pay more for a status-object if they felt ‘powerless,’ obviously they’d say no.”
“A brand is always a story well told,” a buyer at Henri Bendel tells the New York Times, in this story about a young Chicago woman who sought out the help of Michel Roudnitska — the Brian Eno of perfumers — to create a fragrance in memory of her grandmother, Ellie and Ellie Nuit. Also, NYC readers: Next Wedcnesday, the Secret Science Club hosts Dr. Leslie Vosshall, head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior. Topics discussed: “Is love in the eye of the beholder—or in the schnoz? How do different animals detect smell? How do sweet and stinky scents influence behavior? And why does camembert cheese smell like heaven to some people and offal to others?”
NYTBR on Steven Heller’s “Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalarian State.” The art and design of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Stalinism, and Mao’s China are examined. I’m right now reading a book giving similar examples in architecture, The Edifice Complex. While Nazi iconography is forbidden in contemporary culture, the hammer-and-sickle is a frequent image in the hipster ironic t-shirt business — especially in the the former Eastern Block. It’s not quite clear whether this is airbrushing the past, laughing at it, or both. Last month, Jed Perl accused Chinese artists of glamorizing Mao and the Cultural Revolution.
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