'The Man Has Gone — The Dream Lives On'
The Palazzo Versace and the Re-branding of the Gold Coast
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S132181660000372XKeywords:
Palazzo Versace, the Gold Coast, fashion industry, hotel, re-brandingAbstract
Paris, London, Milan, Tokyo, New York, the Gold Coast — the Gold Coast? The Gold Coast may not rank as an international focal point for high fashion, but it can claim the distinction of hosting the world's first major hotel named after, or more accurately branded by, one of the big names of the international fashion industry — Versace.
References
This expression was used in a series of real estate advertisements for Palazzo Versace condominiums in the Gold Coast Bulletin.
The major source for these observations are non-academic journalistic articles: see, for example, Cameron Stewart, ‘Gold Rush’, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 8–9 September 2001: 23–26; Leisa Scott and Andrew Fraser, ‘Paradise Revisited'; The Weekend Australian, 16–17 June 2001: 24–25. ‘Our Community: A Social Profile of the Gold Coast’, published by the Gold Coast City Council www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au, is a useful source of statistical information. For a brief academic overview of contemporary Gold Coast conditions, see Patrick Mullins, ‘The Evolution of Australian Tourism Urbanization’, in Cities and Visitors: Regulating People, Markets and City Space, eds Lily M. Hoffman, Susan S. Fainstein and Dennis R. Judd (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003): 126–42.
Salt, Bernard, The Big Shift, 2nd edn (Melbourne: Hardie Grant Books, 2003).
Griffin, Grahame, ‘Fred and Regina — Beaches and Bodies: A Study of Two Popular Gold Coast Photographers’, Australian Journal of Communication 29(3) (2002): 1–16.
On postmodern urban cultures and lifestyles relevant to the Gold Coast, see Amin, Ash Thrift, Nigel, Cities: Reimagining the Urban (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002); John Hannigan, Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (London: Routledge, 1998); Gordon MacLeod and Kevin Ward, ‘Spaces of Utopia and Dystopia: landscaping the Contemporary City’, Geografiska Annaler, 84B(3–4) (2002): 153–70; Sharon Zukin, ‘Urban Lifestyles: Diversity and Standardization in Spaces of Consumption’, Urban Studies 35(5) (1998): 825–40. For more specific discussion on the marketing and branding of ‘regenerated’ cities, see: Graeme Evans, ‘Hard-branding the Cultural City: from Prado to Prada’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27(2) (2003): 417–40; Graeme Evans and Jo Foord, ‘Shaping the Cultural Landscape: Local Regeneration Effects’, in Urban Futures: Critical Commentaries on Shaping the City, eds Malcolm Miles and Tim Hall (London: Routledge, 2003): 167–81; Paul Hubbard, ‘Urban Design and City Regeneration: Social Representations of Entrepreneurial Landscapes’, Urban Studies, 33(8) (1996): 1441–62; Miriam Greenberg, ‘Branding Cities: A Social History of the Urban Lifestyle Magazine’, Urban Affairs Review 36(2) (2000): 228–63. ‘Tourism urbanisation’ was the term originated in Patrick Mullins’ pioneering study — centred on the Gold Coast — of cities created by and for tourism: Patrick Mullins, ‘Tourism Urbanization’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 15(3) (1991): 326–42.
Ford, Larry R., ‘Midtowns, Mega structures and World Cities’, The Geographical Review 88(4) (1998): 528–48.
For background to the Abedian-Versace deal, see Massey, Murray, ‘How Versace was Lured Down Under’, Business Review Weekly, 31 August 1998: 35: Matt Robbins, ‘The Man from Hotel Versace’, The Australian, 28 August 1998: 41.
The luxury goods industry has been feeling the pinch lately with debt burdens and the fallout from SARS and terrorism. Gucci and Versace both recorded losses in mid-2003. It has been suggested, too, that the ‘conglomerate model’, which includes both the traditional elite market and the ‘mass affluent’ market, is yet to be proven ('Oh Dior. Label-bodied Jump Off Band Wagon’, The Weekend Australian, 5-6 July 2003: 33). For a discussion of the exclusivity of luxury brands versus the necessity of their appeal to wider markets, see Jose Luis Nueno and John A. Quelch, ‘The Mass Marketing of Luxury’, Business Horizons 41(6) (1998): 61.
Faulkner, Bill and Russell, Roslyn, ‘Movers and Shakers: Chaos Makers in Tourism Development’, Tourism Management 20(4) (1999): 411–23.
Logan, John R. and Molotch, Harvey L., Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987): 13.
Circle of Cavill, currently under construction, will be two towers — one of 50 storeys, the other of 40 storeys. An advertisement for the development on one of its hoardings shows a 30-something male reading a copy of Bernard Salt's book The Big Shift.
Daley, John, ‘The Intangible Economy and Australia’, Australian Journal of Management, 26, Special Issue, (2001): 124.
Quoted by Thurman, Judith, ‘String Theory (Literature and Fashion)’, The New Yorker, 4 November 2002: 78, 33.
Reka Buckley and Stephen Gundle, ‘Flash Trash: Gianni Versace and the Theory and Practice of Glamour’, in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explanations and Analysis, eds Bruzzi, Stella and Gibson, Pamela Church (London: Routledge, 2000): 331–48.
Taylor, Lou, ‘The Hilfiger Factor and the Flexible Commercial World of Couture’, in The Fashion Business: Theory, Practice, Image, eds Nicola White and Ian Griffiths (Oxford: Berg, 2000): 121–42.
Floch, Jean-Marie, Visual Identities, trans. Pierre Van Osselaer and Alec McHoul (London: Continuum, 2000): 124.
Nueno, and Quelch, , ‘The Mass Marketing of Luxury’: 61.
Holt, Douglas B., ‘Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory of Consumer Culture and Branding’, Journal of Consumer Research 29(1) (2002): 70–91.
Correspondence from Anne Jamieson, General Manager Sunland Group, 6 June 2003.
Lloyd, Richard, ‘Neo-bohemia: Art and Neighbourhood Development in Chicago’, Journal of Urban Affairs 24(5) (2002): 517–32.
Abedian has commented on the ‘shift in emphasis towards the domestic market’, with domestic tourism ‘account[ing] for 80 per cent of guests’ (Jeff Sommerfield, ‘Cut-rate Rooms Boost Resort’, The Courier-Mail, 10 September 2002: 3). For notions of the Palazzo Versace treat see ‘There's No Harm in a Night of Indulgence’, Weekend (Gold Coast) Bulletin, 16–17 September 2002: 10; Rachael Templeton, ‘Doubles Booked for a Pampering’, Gold Coast Bulletin, 17 February 2003: 2. On shopping treats, see Daniel Miller, A Theory of Shopping (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).
Mullins, Patrick, “Class Relations and Tourism Urbanization: The Regeneration of the Petit Bourgeoisie and the Emergence of a New Urban Form’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 18(4) (1994): 591–608.
Holt, Douglas B., ‘Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption?’, Journal of Consumer Research 25 (1998): 10, 20.
Crewe, Louise and Goodrum, Alison, ‘Fashioning New Forms of Consumption’, in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explanations and Analysis, eds Bruzzi, Stella and Pamela Gibson, Church (London: Routledge, 2000): 25–48. See also David Chancy, Lifestyles (London: Routledge, 1996).
‘Double access’ is a term employed by Jostein Gripsrud to describe the ‘class privilege’ of access to both high and low culture. I have taken the liberty of applying it to those possessing high intellectual or artistic cultural capital who might condescend to indulge themselves at the Palazzo Versace. Jostein Gripsrud, ‘High Culture Revisited’, Cultural Studies 3(2) (1989): 194–207.
Quoted in Swan, G. M. Peter, ‘An Economic Analysis of Taste — A Review of Gary S. Becker: Accounting for Tastes’, International Journal of the Economics of Business 6(2) (1999): 261.
‘Rents on the Move’, Gold Coast Bulletin, 24–25 April 2004: 106.
Rogers, Jenny, ‘Acquisition of High Rises “Not Aussie”’, Gold Coast Bulletin, 13–14 March 2004: 22. Developers have been buying units in old blocks and then using their majority interest to pressure remaining owners to agree to demolition.
Kearns, Gerry Philo, Chris (eds), Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital Past and Present (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1993): 16. For further discussion concerning the impact on city ‘others’ of gentrification and the ‘the intense integration of the real estate industry into the definitional core of neoliberal urbanism’, see Neil Smith, ‘New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy’, Antipode, 34(3) (2003): 427–50.
‘Rents on the Move’: 106.
Lloyd, Richard, ‘Neo-bohemia: Art and Neighbourhood Development in Chicago’, in The Rise of the Creative Class, ed. Florida, Richard (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
