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| Lifestyles
of the Rich and Shameless |
| Bathrooms
are booming,
news reports from the world's two most unequal developed nations last
week confirmed — at the luxury end. In the United States, notes
the Washington Post, spending on bathrooms that run $8,000
and more will hit $22 billion in 2006, almost triple the $7.3 billion
spent on luxury bathrooms in 2003 — and “10 times what
the U.S. government will spend on AIDS research this year.” In
the UK, observes
a Telegraph report, spending on bathroom fittings and
fixtures leaped to $1.8 billion last year, up 50 percent from 1998.
British deep pockets appear to have the hots for the “Agape spoon
bath,” a $9,200 tub shaped like “a halved avocado.” American
swells seem to prefer luxuriating in the Waterworks Clothilde, a $29,000
hand-hammered copper bathtub with a tin-lined basin. July 10, 2006 |
| Want
the best for your little ones? Conde Nast, one of the
world's biggest magazine publishing empires, has just
the mag for you — if you think $390 Fleurville diaper
bags will help ensure you a happy household. Cookie, the
new Conde Nast mag that carries the tagline “all the best
for your family,” overflows
with ads pitching $100 cashmere baby pants and other face-saving
must-haves to anxious affluents. Media critic Larry Dobrow calls
the new Conde Nast title “a
mommy product bible,” a magazine “no more about
what's best for one's family than The Empire Strikes Back
is about the feasibility of interplanetary travel.” June
19, 2006 |
Makers
of luxury whirlpool baths are grinning a good bit these
days, reports Kitchen & Bath
Design News. The bath crowd had been worried that the rising
demand for “super showers” — units that can
come complete with a
built-in TV and foot massage — would depress the market
for luxury whirlpools. That's not happening. Deep-pockets are buying
both. They want, explains Shelly Roberts, a noted bathware
marketeer in California, “the
shower with the full massage system and the jetted-bath.”
January
30, 2006 |
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