Conspicuous consumption is out. The global financial crisis has made thrift cool again. And yet How To Spend It, the Financial Times' unashamedly indulgent magazine, continues to cram its pages with yachts, Swiss watches and dream houses.
From Saturday, FT readers who lap up the glossy pages over a coffee and a croissant at the weekend will now be able to indulge their passion for profligacy seven days a week thanks to a new How To Spend It website.
The launch has raised eyebrows in media circles. There are big questions over whether the experience of enjoying a luxury magazine can be replicated online and whether advertisers will follow it there. Some also question whether now is the right moment.
While Howtospendit.com showcases gifts for thousands of pounds, the upmarket fashion site Net-A-Porter has started offering customers the option of receiving their deliveries in brown paper bags to conceal their splurging.
"How To Spend It does jar a bit in this climate, doesn't it?" says Eve Samuel-Camps, head of press at media agency Universal McCann. "It is certainly true that since the mid-part of this year the trend has been very much towards discreet purchasing if you could afford it.
"How To Spend It is just not very contemporary with the mood of Britain this year, and across Europe and globally."
The FT insists the timing is spot on, tapping into a late move online by luxury goods advertisers and a desire among consumers for quality, long-lasting products.
Chasing revenues
Despite the downturn, business titles have been keenly chasing luxury advertising revenues. Last year the Wall Street Journal launched WSJ, a global, large-format glossy magazine covering finance to fashion. The Economist publishes a quarterly lifestyle magazine called Intelligent Life.
Media-watchers expect the FT's luxury advertising revenues, both newspaper and online, to rise this year. The paper's chief executive, John Ridding, says How To Spend It's is buoyant and will be adding new editions next year. He says: "There has been a flight to quality. The focus has always been quality brands and global brands, it's never really been a bling product."
By taking the magazine online, the FT hopes to reach rich readers in all corners of the world. "There are still an awful lot of wealthy people in the world who don't read How To Spend It," says the title's editor, Gillian de Bono.
She argues that by keeping the same editorial team, the magazine can retain its core personality online, while the technology from its design partner Razorfish will help it replicate a "glossy, indulgent" experience.
Online features – all free while the site builds critical mass – will include the Reconnoisseur, a regularly updated collection of what de Bono calls "life-enhancing tips to do with luxury lifestyle", such as details of a "below-the-radar florist".
The founding editor of How to Spend It and the doyenne of luxury writers, Lucia van der Post, is rejoining the magazine as a columnist and publishing thrice-weekly "Van der postings" online.
Rising readership for style.com, the online home of Vogue set up by its publisher Condé Nast, suggests con sumers are not averse to their favourite glossies going digital. Jamie Pallot, editorial director at Condé Nast Digital, says publishers have to let go of any illusions a website can retain the "hermetically sealed" essence of a magazine.
"They can do well but it all depends on the degree to which they embrace the medium. They are two very different media and they get more different every day," he says, citing Style.com's interaction with readers via features such as a Twitter fashion feed.
The FT believes it is that kind of interaction that luxury goods companies are also craving. The How To Spend It website has set up "brand hubs" where advertisers invite readers to click through to extra information and images.
Ridding believes the site launch will allow the FT to ride a wave of luxury goods companies taking their advertising online. Luxury advertising on FT.com doubled year-on-year in the first half. Launch sponsors for the How To Spend It site include Rolex watches, Krug champagne and the American jeweller Harry Winston.
Part of the attraction of the web for luxury goods companies is the ability to measure the power of their advertising.
They are also following their customers: Dennis Weber, luxury goods analyst at Evolution Securities, says consumers are increasingly using the web for secret high-end shopping in this new age of apparent austerity.
"People don't want to be seen walking round with shopping bags from expensive brands. The online market provides a shelter from that."
In the past, limited bandwidths prevented luxury companies creating rich online campaigns. Faster internet connections are changing that, says Amelia Torode at the creative marketing agency VCCP, which has worked with luxury brands including Dunhill.
"If you were Cartier you wouldn't want to put 100 years or so of brand history in a pixellated banner," she says. "Now the digital experience can be more akin to film."
For now, there are few examples of any luxury brands doing a stellar job in cyberspace, she says, but she does highlight Chanel and DKNY creating iPhone applications with offerings such as catwalk videos and the ability to browse through fashion collections online, and Dolce & Gabbana launching an online luxury magazine, Swide.
Louise Pilkington, marketing director at Krug, says the campaign on How To Spend It.com marks the first time the brand has really made the move online.
Skyscrapers
"I'm not a really big believer in online advertising per se. Because for a brand like Krug, it's very hard to imagine using digital advertising like banners and skyscrapers," she says.
But FT readers are the kind of affluent people the champagne maker wants to reach and Krug says it was keen to be part of the online launch.
"It's a really smart thing to do because people are looking for not necessarily safe choices – because you still need to innovate and in a recession perhaps even more so – but things you can really believe will deliver a very strong return and something that is measurable," says Pilkington.
For now, luxury brands are likely to remain most at home in the glossy pages. For brands that thrive on exclusivity, the internet brings the spectre of mass participation and the kind of mainstream popularity that fashionistas term the "Burberry effect".
"Luxury is in bed with magazines …It's about the environment, the stature of what it says about your brand. It's not about reach," says Universal McCann's Samuel-Camps. "If it were about numbers, people would just use the Sun.
"The magazines are still very much a firm fixture because magazines say something about the brand in a way no other medium can."