Freedom to question ads at Louis is a luxury
By Beth Teitell
Tuesday, August 10, 2004

I thought there was no such thing as a stupid question.
     Apparently Debbie Greenberg, owner of Louis, Boston, doesn't agree.
     I called Greenberg last week, in hopes she could explain her store's new ad to me.
     Maybe you've seen it. It's a vintage photograph of three elderly women (decidedly not Louis shoppers), one covering her ears, a second her eyes and the third her mouth. “Freedom of Speech is a Luxury,” the text reads.
     It is? What would James Madison say?
     After congratulating Greenberg on hosting the party that was the talk of the DNC - and wondering whether John Kerry [related, bio] (or, more importantly, Ben Affleck) would consider freedom of speech a luxury - I asked what the ad meant.
     I mean, there are some freedoms I can understand Louis trumpeting: The freedom to sell sunglasses that cost $955 (non-prescription), or men's suits for more than $5,000, or a 4.4-ounce jar of salt for $11.
     Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom to purvey a $295 pair of pre-ripped Neil Barrett jeans.
     But Greenberg seemed disgusted by my obtuseness: “You don't get it?” she asked.
     Silence.
     “It's a luxury,” she “explained.” “You should appreciate it.”
     Greenberg told me that the concept of “luxury” changed after Sept. 11, 2001. “The feeling of security is a luxury now. I think we've lost all of that, with the sense of knowing terror is at our doorstep.”
     Like the two spots preceding it (“Friendship is a luxury” and “Time is a luxury”), the ad has generated a thoughtful response, Greenberg said. “People are happy someone is valuing the things that seem really important right now,” she said.
     Greenberg plays up the importance of an interior “sense of well-being . . . as opposed to an exterior (sense of) well-being.”
     In years past, she said, especially in the glory days of the '90s, with the limos and fur coats, luxury was “overt.” But now, she continued, the superficial has less meaning. “People are spending more money on health and healing - food that is organic and safe, personal trainers.”
     I thought about a pair of pumps in Louis' shoe department that would have made Carrie Bradshaw stop short (they were $595), and the $125 T-shirts, and an everyday silk dress for $1,850, and I couldn't help but use the “L” word to describe the merchandise, and to note that, except for the over-priced food, all of the stuff was in the exterior category.
      Well - guess what? My attitude was “a Boston thing.” (I understood this was not, as Martha Stewart would say, a good thing.) “We sell nice things,” Greenberg said. “The luxury market can be defined in many ways.”
     Like, uh, a $1,795 suede jacket, or a $595 leather belt?
     At my request, she explained the link between freedom of speech and her Back Bay shrine to consumption.
     “We value the things that are important in this world,” she said.
     Point taken.