People often joke how everything can become expensive when you put a luxury brand’s logo on it, regardless of whether the exuberant prices are justified or not.
The news that Louis Vuitton is launching a $1000 face shield is a great example of the snob effect in action.
The French brand announced that it will launch its luxury face shield called the LV Shield starting on October 30. It will be one item in the brand’s 2021 Collection, which incorporates personal protective equipments such as face shields as a fashion item of sorts in the post-Covid world.
In an official statement that almost reads like a sketch from Monty Python, Louis Vuitton said that the face shield is both fashionable and useful that will surely attract the attention to the wearer. Whether this attention will be a viable one is unclear.
The company added that the face shield can also be worn much like a visor should the wearer pull the shield up. The shield itself is said to protect the UV rays from the sun, although it is yet to be seen if anyone would be willing to purchase a $1000 visor just from the brand recognition.
This face shield and visor in one is just another example of the fashion industry adapting to the so called ‘New Normal’ in a post-Covid era. During the early days of the global pandemic, LV and other luxury brands used their assembly lines to produce PPEs both for sale and charity.
As the world became more used to the pandemic, brands began to explicitly monetize the PPEs by turning them into fashion items. Burberry led the pack by starting to sell $115 masks that bear its recognizable traits.
As masks and other PPEs become an essential aspect of everyday life, people are finding their own ways to imbue personality and style into the masks. One Indian man for instance ordered a pure gold mask that is said to be worth $4000 in total.
Regular face shields can be purchased for 1/40th of the cost at around $25 per shield. The Center for Disease Control has not fully endorsed the efficacy of face shields in preventing Covid-19.
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Replaced!