Once Asia's luxury shopping epicentre, Japan seems to be losing its taste for luxury brand. Last year LVMH decided to can plans for a new Louis Vuitton flagship store in Tokyo's Ginza shopping district. Now Versace has gone a step further, announcing it plans to shut down its Japanese stores. The luxury fashion label currently has outlets in Osaka, Tokyo, and Chiba.

A statement from the company says that Versace's Japanese boutiques "no longer represented the brand image and it was felt to be more advantageous for the company to close them and start with a clean slate."

Experts say the Japanese are following world trends for discreet luxury, without the logos and obvious branding of many mass-marketed lines. Instead, the new breed of Japanese stylistas prefer to mix and match outfits with high and low-end fashion items. Whatever the reason behind the shift, it's bad news for a fashion industry already struggling in the face of the financial crisis.

[Source: Luxist]
[Image Source: JaguarJulie/Flickr]

Versace Bags on eBay

I'm always on the lookout for luxury, whether it's to drool over beautiful items or to laugh at the ridiculous prices. So I was pretty excited to find Maybeyoushouldntbuythat.com, a new blog dishing up lavish goods with a healthy dose of snark.

This opulent Ginza Tanaka purse is one of the items that caught my eye. And for the cool $1.63 million price tag, that's exactly what you want it to do. It's a head turner, but it's the details that drive the price up. It's made entirely of platinum, studded with a whopping 2,182 diamonds. These precious gems add up to a staggering 208 karats in all.

Never mind that the platinum is bound to be heavy, and you'd probably need to employ a bodyguard to take this beauty out. What do we expect from the jewelry maker who created a 24-karat gold horse for a newborn Japanese prince, and a gold Christmas tree?

Sometimes we should just enjoy luxury for luxury's sake. Personally, I'll do it by checking out Maybeyoushouldntbuythat.com rather than laying down my hard earned cash!

[Source: Maybeyoushouldntbuythat.com]

Platinum Purses on eBay

The economic crisis has claimed another victim: the proposed Louis Vuitton store in Japan.

Plans to open an LV store in Japan's famous Ginza shopping district are now on hold. The store was slated to be the biggest Louis Vuitton store in the world, with 12 floors spanning 12, 000 square meters.

Japan is considered the French fashion label's most lucrative market, with one third of young women in the country owning a Louis Vuitton bag or item of clothing. But due to the credit crunch, most people are curbing the purchase of such luxury goods.

The decision to stall the store's opening is thought to be the latest indicator Japan is heading for its worst recession since the Second World War. You know that times are tough when Louis Vuitton's staunchest supporters can no longer afford their glamorous goods!

Hopefully once the global economy turns around the store will go ahead as big and beautiful as planned!

[Source: ABC News]
[Image Source: Andy54321/Flickr]

Louis Vuitton Handbags for eBay