A TIKTOK BOMB EXPOSES A GLOBAL SCAM
Since April 2025, a wave of viral videos filmed in Chinese factories has ignited the fuse. Workers are seen assembling Hermès bags, Louis Vuitton belts, Dior shoes. All under standard, sometimes squalid, factory conditions, far from the dreamy Parisian ateliers. The videos are raw, clear, subtitled, and aimed directly at Western audiences. They denounce a simple truth: the luxury industry is a façade. Beneath the “Made in France” label, it is often China that sweats, stitches, cuts, and zips.
A PLANETARY-SCALE FRAUD
A bag sold for $38,000 costs less than $1,500 to produce. The difference? A label, an ad campaign, an illusion. The myth of artisanal craftsmanship is maintained by storytelling, hollow models, and glossy Vogue spreads. Meanwhile, in Guangdong, women sew thirteen hours a day for next to nothing. If one falls, another replaces her. This is the true face of Western luxury: colonial makeup, social disdain, post-industrial exploitation.
THE MASTERS OF DECEPTION HAVE NAMES
Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH. Delphine Arnault, heiress. François-Henri Pinault, head of Kering. Alain and Gérard Wertheimer, Chanel’s golden shadows. These names lead empires that destroy lives. While their private jets cruise Europe, their factories squeeze the sweat of thousands of invisible workers. The dividends they pocket surpass the budgets of public hospitals. They are the smiling faces of institutionalised economic violence.
CHINA’S COUNTERSTRIKE: A GEOPOLITICAL LESSON
In response to the trade war imposed by the US, China strikes back. Not with missiles, but with videos, images, evidence. It exposes the shameful practices of the West while selling its own products, sometimes identical, sometimes counterfeit—at a fraction of the price. The weapon is cultural. It hits vanity, class, power. Western youth is the target, influencers tremble. This is no longer just about trade, it’s about prestige. And prestige is collapsing.
AN INDUSTRY ROTTING FROM WITHIN
LVMH, Kering, Chanel, all see sales plummet. Margins evaporate. Their public loses faith. Gen Z, cynical and hyper-informed, no longer buys the dream. They’d rather own a well-made fake than a €5,000 bag stitched in the same factory as the knock-off. They see in China’s response a mirror held up to the West, a social revenge, a cultural slap. Luxury no longer means quality. It has become a symbol of institutionalised deceit.
ON THE FACTORY FLOOR, REALITY IS A GASH
Chromium VI used in tanneries is carcinogenic. Glue vapours destroy lungs slowly. Workers speak of burns, fainting spells, severed fingers. Wen X., a 32-year-old woman, lost an eye operating a faulty machine while producing a limited edition of Vuitton belts. She received no compensation. Production carried on. Luxury demands blood and silence.
A GLOBAL MONEY LAUNDERING MACHINE
These giant conglomerates don’t just sell dreams, they launder fortunes. Opaque networks of holdings in Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands or Switzerland conceal profits, tax fraud and sometimes criminal origins of purchases. Who buys a €90,000 handbag? Oligarchs, mafiosi, dictators, drug lords. Luxury is the velvet curtain draped over the face of global crime. Every piece of jewellery, every watch, is a trophy of impunity.
THE WESTERN MEDIA’S COMPLICIT SILENCE
Where are the journalists? The ones who know that Italian leather comes from South American slaughterhouses, tanned with toxic chromium in India, stitched by children in Vietnam? Where are the front pages of Le Monde, Libération, the New York Times? Too busy reviewing fashion shows, praising the maisons. Their silence is complicity. Luxury has become an untouchable sacred cow. Its image is protected like a nuclear bomb: the arrogance of the rich.
INFLUENCERS: THE LIE’S WINDOW DISPLAY
Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. Millions of followers watch models posing in front of yachts, villas, obscene bags. Their message is clear: consume and shut up. The elite perform for the masses. But influencers are the useful idiots of a toxic system. They don’t sell style, they sell alienation. Every post is a slap in the face to the garment workers, a betrayal to struggling youth, a propaganda tool for the status quo. Luxury has become the aesthetic arm of capitalism.
TOMORROW: LUXURY WILL BE CHINESE OR NONEXISTENT
This masquerade reveals a historical turning point. Europe is no longer the centre of the world. Florentine ateliers no longer inspire. It’s China’s megacities that dictate the rhythm, control production, and now, the narrative. Luxury was always just a story. That story now changes hands. The West loses its monopoly on illusion. China knows it, and strikes with precision: viral videos, orchestrated leaks, asymmetric cultural warfare.
THE REIGN OF APPEARANCE COLLAPSES
Let’s be clear: the Western bourgeoisie has been naked all along. Their “taste” is nothing but fear of losing status. Their “elegance” is a uniform of domination. They don’t buy bags—they buy borders, symbols of exclusion, social privilege. That privilege has now been gutted by China. What’s collapsing is not just a market. It’s a mythology. Western luxury is dead. All that remains is the stench of its corpse, still lit in the window of rue Saint-Honoré.
WHAT’S COMING IS A DELUGE
What falls today on the luxury industry is only the prelude. The storm ahead is moral, social, civilisational. What China has just revealed isn’t just a rotten business, it’s the decomposition of a world. One that imagined Europe as eternal source of taste, elegance, power. That time is gone. Truth is coming. The idols are crumbling. The people are rising.
LUXURY IS DEAD
LUXURY IS NAKED
LUXURY IS AN INSULT
LUXURY IS A CORPSE
LUXURY IS A CRIME
G.S.
