“I want to still be me when I wake up one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany’s”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Just in time to remind everyone what they really want for Christmas, the French conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton is acquiring the American jeweler Tiffany & Company for $16.2 billion. It’s the biggest ever deal in luxury goods and makes LVMH’s chairman, Bernard Arnault, the third-richest man in the world. What does it mean for Tiffany’s trademark blue box? There will be more of them, for starters. Mr. Arnault intends to increase international sales by expanding the brand’s presence in China and Europe, where LVMH has a stronger foothold.
― “Buying the Blue Box”, New York Times, December 1, 2019
In Total Accumulation, Leslie Kerby’s multi-disciplinary solo-project uses the Tiffany’s box as a stand-in to examine our propensity to accumulate - wealth, debt, and even people in order to drive specific agendas both political and personal impacting the world we occupy of the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’.