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Cult of Luxury: Craftsmanship, Scarcity and the Hermès Brand
How Hermès has succeeded in creating veneration-worthy items as well as a successful global brand is a story worth studying.Thierry Hermès was a leather harness maker who set up shop in Paris in 1837. The saddles, bridles and harnesses he made were prized by the rising bourgeoisie of Louis Phillipe's reign in 19th Century France. Since then Hermes, almost without parallel, has made a business out of selling beautiful items no one needs, as well as items one needs but… -
Cult of Luxury: The Romance
THE ROMANCE of LUXURY:  One evening a few years ago, my wife and I dined with another couple at Bartolotta Ristorante Di Mare in Las Vegas at the Wynn Hotel. Named for its chef, Paul Bartolotta, the restaurant features Italian cooking and seafood specialties and is very, very expensive.... View Original Article -
Cult of Luxury: What it is, who makes it and how we recognize it
What is luxury? How do we experience it or know it when we see it? More to the point: how do the purveyors of luxury communicate it to us? I've been thinking a lot about the concept of luxury lately and I want to explore its meaning on a regular... View Original Article -
Sandy Frank: An Appreciation
Sanford Jay Frank, the Emmy Award-winning writer and producer, screenwriting guru and conservative ideologue whom everyone called Sandy, died at his home in Calabasas on April 18 of complications arising out of a glioblastoma, a cancerous brain tumor. He was 59. Frank grew up in Springfield, Mass., where his father worked at the post office. He attended Harvard, where he found an outlet for his humor when he joined the Harvard Lampoon, also creating lifelong friendships with Jim Downey ("Saturday… -
Don Was' Excellent Adventure: On his new gig as president of Blue Note Records and his old job as Rolling Stones collaborator
Wednesday, June 5, 2013 PURPLECLOVER.com Don Was, the multi-Grammy award-winning producer, a close collaborator of the Rolling Stones whose band Was/Not Was still plays the occasional gig; and who last year became president of legendary Jazz label Blue Note Records, is easy to spot in a crowd, or a police lineup for that matter, because he’s the tall guy with the dreadlocks wearing the hat and shades and the flipflops. I’ve known Don for more than a decade (our wives… -
Online Courses: The Perpetual Student
It seems like only yesterday that my friend Teri was telling me that if she could do college all over again she would take different courses: literature, poetry and just a greater variety of subjects. Well, I’ve got some good news: turns out that you can now take an amazing variety of courses, many of them offered by universities that most of us couldn’t get into today, such as Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, many of them free. What’s the hitch?… -
"Doc" The Life and Fictions of Harold Humes
Watching wasted genius, a life gone wrong, is compelling and poignant, but with "Doc" airing December 9, at 10PM on PBS' Independent Lens (Check your local listings for actual times), we feel much more like guests doing a post-mortem on a private party where the drinks may have been dosed. "Doc" is a documentary by Immy Humes about her father, the novelist and cultural figure, Harold L. "Doc" Humes, who was by many measures a success: he was a founder… -
Bela & The Benz
Hatschek Bela. The very sound of my great-grandfather's name brings a smile to my face. In Hungarian, last names go first, so although Bela was his first name, he has always been Hatschek Bela to me -- all one name -- a legendary figure in our family, a celebrated forebear about whom my mother and grandmother told stories.He was famous for being the first man in Hungary to own a car, and my grandmother kept a clipping from the Royal… -
Summer and the start of school
In one of his most famous works, the French poet Francois Villon asked: "Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? (But where are the snows of yesteryear?)." I might ask the same about where this summer went. It seems like just last week my daughter was getting out of class, and now she's about to start up again. This year, summer just slipped through my fingers. Americans are often chided for their inability to go on vacation -- a problem I've… -
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Books
"The Bones" by Seth Greenland (Bloomsbury) Shop at Amazon.com! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home?site=amazon&tag=tommywood-20 "And The Word Was" by Bruce Bauman (Other Press) Shop at Amazon.com! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home?site=amazon&tag=tommywood-20 -
About Tommywood
Tommywood is a column that explores the cultural landscape of Los Angeles through a personal lens, taking the reader everywhere from a tour of Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica, to Robert Evan’s bed, with a morning spent in Traffic school and lunch with French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy, with time for a game of mah-jong, and a remembrance of when Hungarians ruled Hollywood. Tom Teicholz is a film producer in Los Angeles. Everywhere else, he’s an author and journalist who has written…