Christmas ’07 brought a new level of high-end retail to Cape Town. The charge was led by Louis Vuitton which opened an impeccably designed and massively intimidating store in the V&A Waterfront’s new luxury shopping hall. Gucci, Prada and Jimmy Choo followed shortly thereafter and now even Canterbury has taken its place, peddling a luxury line called Off Field.

What originally drew me to the LV store was the window display which I had read about in an ’07 edition of Wallpaper[1]. The display, named Latitude 48.914/Longitude 02.286, was the winner in an international design competition and the elegant lines of its balsa contours are just so – luxury. The display was very impressive, very high-end. But now LV have a new display and I’m ready to name this as my design statement of the year.

The display is of a wall of chromed surveillance cameras hovering around an LV product. The cameras watch the product adoringly, fixated by its beauty. The arrangement of the cameras render them more like silver hummingbirds buzzing around a flower than their cold steel counterparts on wet London streets.
By fixating the cameras on the product in such a swarm the display makes several powerful associations all at once. The first is about desirability; the way the cameras fawn over the product is more about desire than control. The second is about pervasive celebrity. The cameras act as paparazzi[2] to the scene and the products are the images of a pristine 24/7 society.
But it is the last association of the display that immediately made it, to me, the culmination of 2008 modernity. I don’t like using the word zeitgeist, but the LV display makes an immaculate case for total surveillance as being desirable – a powerful luxury. The cameras themselves are chromed and, unlike the viewer who is separated from the display by glass, share a rarified, exalted space with the products. By desiring the beautifully made bag or tie we also reach out for the privilege, wealth, exclusivity and protection of the cameras.

The standard conservative[3] response to surveillance is ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong you shouldn’t be worried about it’, and invariably total surveillance like that which is emerging in the UK ends up being a protective shield for the wealthy who remain behind the deeply tinted windows of their estate cars until they are ready to emerge into the public eye. The last few years have crystallized a deep-rooted desire for luxury as defined by LV, Ralph Lauren and Armani[4], their products are the standard-bearers for a life lived well. And within such a well-lived life surveillance is not something to be feared. Pervasive surveillance loves you, it holds you in its tender gaze as you emerge from your SW1 home and it protects you from the grime through which you temporarily pass.

Update - 19 September: AnimalNetwork featured a variant of this display which places the product in a museum-type glass case. In this version the cameras act as protection against burglars and offers a humorous spin, in effect – this is what we need to do to keep people from stealing our product. Very desirable.