Weekend readings (1)

I regularly flip through the Financial Times, especially the weekend edition. Here are a few thoughts and observations from this weekend:

1) The article "The zero-sum mindset is no mystery" resonated with the way I tend to think. A zero-sum mindset assumes that for something to be gained somewhere, it must be lost elsewhere.

This logic often plays out in luxury, where cost-cutting—like trimming staff or production—saves resources but risks reputational damage. It partly masks a structural crisis with deeper institutional roots, though industry leaders call it cyclical. I covered this in my LVMH 2025 AGM article.

The spatial conclusion at the end of the article—that to avoid boosting one area at the expense of another, it's time to fix the underlying problem—is hard to argue with.

2) The article "The deification of Rene Girard" mentions his most famous theory: mimetic desire. It means humans don't desire things for their own sake, but because they want to imitate others and compete.

This idea perfectly reflects how luxury operates with aspirational customers. Or as I wrote in the previously mentioned AGM 2025 LVMH article:

Fashion was created by the wealthy, in a class-based society, to distinguish themselves from the poor. The poor, in turn, spent centuries imitating fashion to appear part of the elite—and sometimes that imitation helped them climb the social ladder.

Of course, the mechanism behind desire is more complex, and any theory must include multiple components, but the core idea is indeed simple.

3) The opening line of the article "The uncertainty principle"—"An ability to keep opponents guessing can be a powerful weapon in the hands of politicians"—is fair enough, but it doesn’t really apply to most business sectors.

This is not how Hermès communicates. Their messaging is difficult to describe as anything but transparent in form. Even if the reality is more nuanced, this formal clarity makes them appear more stable to investors. I wrote more on their communication style in my article about their 2024 FY results.

The illustration for that article is my favorite in the whole issue.

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Ideas:

1) I once wrote about how to best advertise luxury in FT. Today I noticed Giorgio Armani placed their ad not in the glossy supplement, but in the main paper—a smarter move for reaching male readers, many of whom likely skip the more lifestyle-oriented inserts.

2) Love that in HTSI photo shoots, they always list the model’s name: "Jamie wears," "Lily wears." A small detail that adds a personal touch. I haven’t seen this practice anywhere else.

3) I really miss the ability to highlight individual phrases in the app. Sometimes a sentence stands out and you want to come back to it later, but saving it manually is tedious. It would be helpful to have a dedicated tab that collects all the user-highlighted content. This feature is also missing in The Economist app.