National Tide 1980

Perhaps it’s because Pierre Cardon started from scratch with bare hands.

The master has developed efficient work habits since he was young.

Perhaps it was also out of concern for his good friend Henri Lacamier that the master had been worried about his plight for a long time.

Now that he finally obtained the key to the possible solution to the problem from Ning Weimin, the master very much hopes to have a face-to-face meeting with his good friend immediately, and wants to finalize the next action plan as soon as possible.

As a result, there was no time to wait, and the master immediately called Henri Lacamier and managed to contact him.

Then he took Ning Weimin and drove there to meet him.

As for Matsumoto Keiko, the master could only change the original plan full of guilt, postpone the reception banquet, say sorry to her, and let Takada Mei take her back to the hotel to rest.

The country house where Henri Lacamier lived is in the western suburbs of Paris, west of the Palace of Versailles.

The specific location is Saint-Leger in the Yvelines department of the Paris region. Because it is fifty kilometers away from the center of Paris, even if you drive there immediately, it will take about an hour and a half.

This villa is a residence of five hundred square meters located in the heart of the Rambouillet forest, with a forest path surrounded by trees.

Although it is not too big, this villa is like a manor.

There are not only beautiful houses and gardens, but also green forests and ponds, which can satisfy many people's dreams.

What's even more amazing is that Ning Weimin didn't see any ordinary people along the way.

Starting from the 7th arrondissement of Paris, after leaving the city, you can only see mansions, villas, and manors. It can be said that the hundreds of mansions you passed by are all for wealthy families, and there are no residences for ordinary people.

Even the most ordinary and dilapidated properties have grand gates and extensive walls.

This made him feel very strange. Could it be that the French had become so wealthy in the 1980s?

It’s not like ordinary people can own such a big house, right?

This is so enviable.

Fortunately, the master was by his side.

As a person who has lived in Paris for most of his life, has become famous in the field of European fashion, and is deeply connected with the European upper class,

After learning about Ning Weimin's confusion, Pierkaton gave him a reasonable explanation.

I bet Paris is basically a "poor in the east and rich in the west" situation.

No matter from the city or the suburbs, the rich and powerful live in the west and the common people live in the east.

Therefore, urban development is also extremely uneven.

The root cause of all this is the wind direction!

To put it bluntly, in the past two hundred years, the wind in almost all major European cities has blown from the west and southwest to the east and northeast.

Therefore, in modern times when black smoke is billowing, in order to stay away from the pollution of coal gas, the wealthy class in Europe will only choose the upwind area - the west, as a place to live.

Therefore, it is not limited to Paris. In fact, throughout Europe, the urban development pattern of "poor in the east and rich in the west" has been determined in this way.

This is still the case today, more than two hundred years later.

In this regard, Ning Weimin really has to admit that "existence is reasonable."

It seems that even if it is an incredible phenomenon, if we understand it carefully, we will eventually find an explanation that is consistent with realistic logic.

Not only that, in order to kill time and relax his nerves, Picardon even used these mansions and manors to explain more European "old money" styles to Ning Weimin in detail along the way.

It is also interesting to say that if we observe and analyze according to the master's point of view, we can even clearly see the differences between these rich people, as well as the differences in wealth and social class.

For example, for a house, there is no need to look at the exterior or interior of the house. Just by looking at the driveway, fence, lawn... you can tell which mansion's owner has a higher status and wealth, whether it is a new rich man, or an old man with a long history. Family.

The reason is that according to Picardon's theory, the principle of "impracticality" is used to measure the level of this group among the rich.

The less practical it is, the more it can reflect wealth and transcendent status.

vice versa.

Specifically, the higher the social class and wealth level, the longer the driveway.

A long, winding driveway is far more imposing than a long, straight one, and its function is simply to show off and show off.

The most classy driveway is the "turning driveway on flat ground", which is the standard "old money" appearance.

If the ground is uneven and there are hills, the detour will increase the practical value and be inferior to the previous level, which is not enough to reflect the aloofness of the owner's social status.

This is often the case for managers of large banks or long-established companies, or managers of foundations. After all, it is difficult for them to completely escape practicality.

And those who own long, straight driveways may only be upstarts with no background. This is determined by the values ​​​​deep in their bones and the cognition they have developed since childhood.

Not only the style of the driveway, but also the pavement material of the driveway is a factor that cannot be ignored.

A light brown gravel driveway is best, less so than a white one, as the latter goes against the principle of avoiding eye-catching and stark contrasts.

But gravel is definitely better than asphalt, and this has nothing to do with whether the material comes from nature. The main reason is that gravel needs to be replaced frequently, which is expensive and troublesome.

Asphalt tar roads are the lowest quality, because they are too economical and practical. Rich people will never use this kind of thing to pave their own roads.

As for the fence, since the emphasis on privacy is a symbol of the highest class, it not only shows that this class is actually invisible to ordinary people, why they are called "invisible rich", but also shows how the level of the fence reflects the level of the owner of the house.

Any fence higher than six feet indicates that the owner is "old money", while low walls and fences that can be seen declare that the owner cannot be the top social class.

Nowadays, even the garage has become a symbol of the owner's status. Garages with more than four cars can basically be classified as belonging to famous families. In the eyes of ordinary people, they have become invisible like the invisible mansions of these people.

Of course, there are cars in the end.

Because "old money" likes to follow ancient principles, and the history of cars is too short to be worthy of entering the ranks of classical styles, the top rich people are more casual in their choice of cars and don't care much about the brand.

In addition to considering comfort and safety, they don't take cars too seriously at all.

The only principle this group follows is that the higher the class status, the slower the car speed.

People at the top of society never need to rush.

In the eyes of the master, there are only two types of people who like fast cars.

One is the young man who wants to give girls a sense of excitement.

The other is the middle class who is full of class anxiety and thinks he is rich.

These two types of people have watched too many racing movies, so they think that driving fast is romantic, sexy and exciting.

But in fact, to be a superior person, you have to drive slowly, steadily, and quietly along the center of the road.

And you should also know that even among those car brands that ordinary people envy and yearn for, there are differences in high and low.

Like Mercedes-Benz is the worst choice in style.

Although the car manufacturer claims to be "high-end", this "high-end" is vulgar, a car brand exclusively for dentists in Beverly Hills, African cabinet ministers, and Japanese Yakuza.

So even among the middle class, only the worst people will buy Mercedes-Benz cars.

As for the off-road vehicles, which are worse than Mercedes-Benz, no matter how advanced they are, they are of low quality, and often convey the following hint: the traffic conditions in the place where the owner lives are bad, and even the most vulgar luxury cars may not be able to drive through.

In short, the core spirit of the top rich is luxury and waste, the purpose is to maintain respectability and show off.

Often spending money that could have been saved is a symbol of social status.

After hearing what the master said, Ning Weimin couldn't help laughing.

Although the master's words were "scolded" to him, it seemed to reveal the truth that he was a poor man in many ways.

But in fact, the master himself is a pragmatic person like him. Although the car they were riding in was set up by the driver, it was very ordinary, just a half-used Chevrolet.

The master's true meaning is not difficult to understand. In fact, it is nothing more than ridiculing those high-handed and flashy groups on the basis of describing him objectively.

Think about it, two poor people who started from scratch can actually have hundreds of millions of dollars to save the high-handed hereditary noble masters. This is such a funny thing. So who is stupid and who is smart?

And the most important thing is that the master used the simplest induction and examples to reveal to Ning Weimin the value standards and aesthetics of the European rich group.

It also made Ning Weimin suddenly enlightened, and suddenly realized the answers to many puzzled questions in his previous life, and felt that he benefited a lot.

To put it bluntly, for people who like luxury goods, what they pursue is definitely not the practical value of using these items, but a kind of "value that can be shown off."

The money people are willing to spend on obviously expensive things is actually all the cost of vanity.

Therefore, the focus of luxury goods business is to give customers the opportunity to show off, expand the popularity of products, create a high threshold, and let people buy them and have the "feeling of rich people."

No matter what practicality, what high-end materials are used, it is useless and unnecessary.

Only the more visible and recognizable luxury goods are, the better they sell, and this is also the secret of Louis Vuitton's success.

Regardless of whether the earliest LV products are practical, LV, which will continue to rise in price in the future, is on the right path to becoming a luxury product.

After all, nothing is easier to recognize at a glance than the handbags and iconic LOGO patterns that women carry every day.

If it is well known that the price of a bag can be equal to that of a luxury car, how attractive is this bag to vain people?

From this point of view, Ning Weimin should really thank Pierre Cardin. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, the old man gave him a very inspiring moment.

The luxury industry, which is currently only called the fashion industry, if you put it bluntly, is not selling products at all, but just a feeling.

The so-called scarcity and hunger marketing are nothing more than creating a high-end symbol after widespread publicity, so that stupid people can see it but cannot eat it, so that they will work hard to get it, so that others will envy them.

For this, Ning Weimin really thanks the master for making him understand the tricks of this industry more deeply.

But even so, Ning Weimin seemed to have underestimated Pierre Cardin's intention, because he soon realized that the master actually wanted to tell him in a tactful way that Henri Lacamier had a very different personality and preferences from the master himself.

It was like giving him a shot of vaccination in advance.

Because to be honest, when Ning Weimin arrived at the place, he found that the living environment of this fourth-generation LV was too luxurious, and it really carried forward the style of "old money" to the extreme.

What surprised Ning Weimin first was that the villa had only a private road paved with yellow stones to enter and exit, and the wall was made of stone, tall and large, and covered with vines.

A well-designed large iron gate, two special security personnel came out of the wooden house behind the door and opened the gate, and the car that Pierre Cardin and Ning Weimin were riding in was able to enter.

Then there was a winding driveway, winding on the flat road, and there were several deer and dozens of white pigeons running on the huge lawn, and several swans swimming in the pond.

In both reality and potential, these extraordinary domestic animals do not remind people of vulgarity and profit.

When they parked the car in front of the villa, a special butler came to open the door for them. After entering the villa, Ning Weimin found that the most obvious feature of this villa was that no matter the corner boards, door panels, and similar places, they were decorated with unnecessary curves.

Wherever wood was visible, dark colors were used instead of light colors, trying to give people an old feeling.

The floor in the house must be hardwood, and it was parquet.

The hand-woven oriental carpet on the floor was almost worn out, and it was something that had been passed down for many generations.

And whether it was the marble corridor, the carved railings and handrails, or the brass door handles, they all needed to be wiped every day.

And all of this, as described by the master on the road, reflected the luxurious and flashy upper-class style of the owner of the house.

But what shocked Ning Weimin the most was the living room waiting for the owner. The decoration here was exquisite and unique, and it was simply a small museum.

In addition to the portraits of four generations of the Vuitton family on the wall, in the corner, there are animal skins, fur decorations and arrows from all over the world.

In the words of Pierre Cardon, who is familiar with this place, this is a unity of aristocratic style and natural style.

In addition, there is a collection of hard stone cups full of Renaissance charm, which is an important witness to the Chinese style of celebrities in the old days.

According to Ning Weimin's judgment, there are probably not many fakes, and they are all real things of great value.

At this time, he has already had a clear feeling that the host he is about to meet should be a person who is proud of his prominent family background and family heritage, but is isolated from the world and a little bit out of touch with the world.

It is probably these factors that make this person have a high vision but a little ignorant of the world, so he can't tell who is a friend and who is an enemy, so he will fall into the evil of others.