The Future of Luxury: A Masterclass in Reinvention by Marlene Dietrich.

The Future of Luxury: A Masterclass in Reinvention by Marlene Dietrich.

The luxury industry is in denial. Every month, in every financial article, the old guard insists that this is just a “slow season,” pointing fingers at China, the U.S. election, a high yen in Japan, all to avoid one central truth: luxury isn’t flagging because of a quarterly slump; it’s floundering because it’s out of sync with culture itself.

In this edition of The Future of Luxury by Summit Communication Group , we'll explore a brazen solution (and potentially annoy just about everyone along the way).

Talk of a “China slowdown” is just that—talk. It’s the convenient fib luxury brands use to cover the cracks in an effete strategy. China is not the cause of luxury’s woes; at best, it’s a symptom. China’s appetite for luxury—the art of living well—is still ravenous; a median piece of contemporary art sells on the mainland for a snip under $400,000, dwarfing the global median of $68,000. If luxury brands are seeing the bottom drop out, it’s because they’ve lost touch with what this new generation of consumer values most.

And make no mistake, they’re not craving the same old “objects” of yesteryear. Gen Z sees more value in wellness, in digital assets, in experiences that transcend the physical. For them, the beauty of a Y2K aesthetic or the trustless logic of crypto art is far more desirable than a brand-plastered handbag or certainly an EV Jaguar. In fashion, too, the magic has faded. It’s no longer a cultural movement, no longer a statement, but an exercise in recycling old status symbols. Many traditional markers of “luxury” now feel like relics of a bygone era rather than statements of bespoke taste or sophistication.

As I write in holiday mode—long lunches, writing, windy walks, intense gym sessions and infrared saunas part of the ritual—it’s as clear as day: if luxury brands want to remain relevant, they must stop trying to resuscitate old ideas or being romantic about what used to work. Reinvention is no longer a campaign or fringe imperative; it’s a lifeline. Clinging to past glories will only weigh them down in an era that’s ready to leave them behind.

But don’t take my word for it. Luxury executives should look no further than Marlene Dietrich, Hollywood’s “box office poison” turned icon. In 1939, Dietrich didn’t merely return to Hollywood; she transformed herself. She traded in sequins for grit, morphing from a frosty, aloof glamour queen into the bawdy, brawling Frenchy, a character with more guts than glamour. Her reinvention saved her career and shattered the very typecasting 'the dream factory' once forced upon her. Dietrich’s performance was a declaration: reinvention is the essence of survival.

SHANGHAI, CHINA - March 16, 2022: During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Night view of Nanjing Road, with few tourists.
Hollywood seemed to have tired of Marlene Dietrich after a series of opulent flops—Angel, The Scarlet Empress, The Devil Is a Woman. She’d come to represent, they said, the kind of glamour the Depression had worn thin.

When the Spotlight Fades

Picture Marlene Dietrich in 1939—"Dearest Kraut," according to Ernest Hemingway—perched in her sanctuary at Cap d'Antibes, a fading star basking in the last of her own glow. Hollywood had turned cold, labeling her “box office poison,” and Dietrich had all but resigned herself to her fate, a fate that meant sinking out of American consciousness. This was a Dietrich the public hardly knew: restless, retired from the spotlight, plotting out her life as a memory rather than a presence. She was still glamorous—how could she be anything else?—but her name was no longer up in lights. Hollywood seemed to have tired of her after a series of opulent flops—Angel, The Scarlet Empress, The Devil Is a Woman. She’d come to represent, they said, the kind of glamour the Depression had worn thin.

Yet even here, half a world away from Hollywood, Dietrich wasn’t idle. Her days were a swirl of glamorous distraction—family breakfasts with her husband Rudolf Sieber, lunch with her lover, the novelist Erich Maria Remarque, dinners with her former director Josef von Sternberg, who was still coaching her on image and style. If Dietrich’s career was over, she’d go out in style, with all the accouterments of fame that had made her an icon. But there was something unsettling, almost desperate, about it all. Von Sternberg saw it, too, and watched his once-untouchable goddess falter, stranded in Europe, her career seemingly as dead as the studios’ appetite for her films.

Then came the call from Hollywood—a last, almost unthinkable offer. It was producer Joe Pasternak, an old Berlin acquaintance, who asked her to come back. Universal wanted Dietrich for Destry Rides Again, a role that would make her roll cigarettes, brawl in a saloon, and wear far fewer sequins than she’d been used to. Her comeback, Pasternak promised, would be nothing short of miraculous. But this was the furthest thing from her old image, from the perfect, icy deity that von Sternberg had crafted. Could she really trade in her glamour for grit? Could she laugh at herself, be mortal, even bawdy?

“I made you into a goddess,” von Sternberg reminded her with an edge of challenge. “Now show them you have feet of clay.” It was her chance—maybe her last—to revive her career, but at what cost?

Viersen, Germany - July 9. 2024: Blue Angel film lobby card detail with Marlene Dietrich from 1930

Destry Rides Again feels like one of those movies where everyone stepped onto the set and suddenly realized they were part of a miracle. By 1939, the Western had become predictable, locked into either sentimental romance or dime-novel machismo, with stoic cowboys who loved nothing more than their horses and the wide, open range. But Destry takes one look at that dusty formula and flips it, with a wink and a smirk, turning the genre into something unexpected and gleefully self-aware. This is a Western where, instead of a handsome cowboy charging into battle, you have Marlene Dietrich as Frenchy—strutting through Bottleneck in a gown that could make a preacher lose his place in the Good Book. She’s equal parts menace and seduction, a human shot of rye in a teetotaling town, and she’s out to show you that sometimes the best gunslinger doesn’t carry a gun at all.

Fresh off a series of European flops, Dietrich is handed a low-cut dress, a smoky saloon, and just enough mischief to set the screen on fire. Frenchy’s songs, like “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have,” written with more of a smirk than a melody by Frederick Hollander, became her lifelong signatures. And why not? With lyrics that hint at both experience and defiance, they were practically written for Dietrich herself, an actress who never played by Hollywood’s rules. She clings to them like talismans, delivering each line as though she’s holding court over a room full of half-drunk cowboys, daring anyone to look away.

Opposite her, you have Jimmy Stewart in his first Western, and he’s all nerves and twitchy sincerity, like a colt just learning to stand. Up until now, Stewart had mostly been the charming sidekick or the slightly awkward boyfriend, a little too tall, a little too innocent for the rougher roles. But in Destry, he turns that innocence into a kind of off-kilter heroism, refusing to carry a gun, dodging violence with clever quips, and sidestepping trouble like he’s in a Mark Twain yarn. “You shoot it out with ’em and...they get to look like heroes,” he says. “But you put ’em behind bars, and they look little and cheap, the way they oughta look.” Watching Stewart here, it’s like seeing the American everyman come to life—a hero who’s neither larger-than-life nor overly dramatic but someone who’s practical, steady, and as reliable as an old friend.

Director George Marshall keeps the film walking a fine line between satire and melodrama, never letting it drift into full parody. There’s genuine affection in Destry’s humour, a sense that it’s gently teasing the Western without taking away any of its rugged charm. It’s clear from the get-go that this isn’t Stagecoach, riding noble and high into the sunset. It’s something altogether cheekier, a Western that lets its characters revel in their own quirks. Take the barroom brawl between Dietrich and Una Merkel—a no-holds-barred, hair-pulling, heel-stomping melee that leaves them bruised and battered, with Stewart’s Destry standing by, watching in bemused awe. It’s messy, undignified, and utterly thrilling, as if they’re daring the Western genre to keep up with them.

Destry Rides Again revels in showing you why the Western rules were too rigid to begin with. It infuses the genre with a knowing wit, a bit of slapstick, and two performances that are as unlikely as they are unforgettable. By the time Dietrich and Stewart have fully made themselves at home in Bottleneck, the film has already done something rare for its time: it’s turned the Western into something both familiar and subversive, a genre-bending ride that leaves you laughing, wincing, and a little bit in love with it all.

Destry Rides Again (1939) | Distributed by Universal Pictures

In Case You Haven't Seen Destry...

Here's the lowdown: Kent (Brian Donlevy) runs Bottleneck like it’s his private kingdom. He owns the saloon, keeps the cash flowing, and handles anything that might interrupt his games, especially poker. When Sheriff Keogh (Joe King) asks one question too many about how Kent’s poker games are always tilted in his favour, Keogh gets himself killed. It’s a message, loud and clear, to anyone else who thinks about stepping out of line. Now, Kent and his girl, Frenchy (Marlene Dietrich)—the kind of saloon girl who’s there for the coin, not the class—are squeezing the life out of the local cattle ranchers.

The town’s mayor, Hiram J. Slade (Samuel S. Hinds), is as crooked as a trail in the badlands and in tight with Kent. Slade comes up with a brilliant plan to keep things under control: make the town drunk, Washington Dimsdale (Charles Winninger), the new sheriff. Dimsdale, who’s usually seen hugging a bottle more than upholding the law, seems like the perfect puppet. But Dimsdale surprises them all; he drops the bottle, dusts off his sense of duty, and sends for an old friend’s son, Tom Destry Jr. (James Stewart), to bring some law to Bottleneck.

Destry shows up in town with Jack Tyndall (Jack Carson), a cattleman, and his sister, Janice (Irene Hervey). From the get-go, he throws everyone off by strolling around without a gun, playing polite with everybody, even Kent and Frenchy. The townsfolk think he’s a joke, especially Dimsdale, who was hoping for something closer to his old boss, the legendary Tom Destry Sr. They hand Destry a mop and a bucket, mocking him as he cleans up Bottleneck—literally. But the laughter stops when some local rowdies storm in, shooting up the place like it’s a competition. Destry, calm as a preacher on Sunday, demonstrates he knows his way around a pistol and lets them know the next round of gunplay will end in a jail cell. Respect starts creeping in.

Destry’s got a nose for trouble, and he starts sniffing around the mysterious disappearance of Sheriff Keogh. His suspicions lead him to Frenchy, who, after some needling, slips up and hints at the truth. But without Keogh’s body, Destry’s got no proof. So, he plays his cards carefully: he deputizes a local Russian immigrant named Boris (Mischa Auer), who’s itching to even the score after Frenchy humiliated him, and bluffs Kent into thinking the body’s been found “in remarkably good condition.” When Kent sends one of his goons to check the burial site, Boris and Dimsdale tail him, catch him in the act, and haul him off to jail.

Now, Destry’s hoping the thug will trade a confession for a lighter sentence, but Mayor Slade—crooked as they come—steps in as judge, ensuring a not-guilty verdict before the trial even starts. Destry tries to bring in a judge from the big city to keep things honest, but Boris blows the plan when he lets the new judge’s name slip down at the saloon. Kent catches wind and sends Frenchy to distract Destry. With real affection for Destry now, Frenchy agrees. While she’s got him at her place, Kent’s men break into the sheriff’s office. In the shootout that follows, Dimsdale takes a fatal hit, and Destry, full of rage and regret, straps on his gun belt for the first time. The kid gloves are off.

Destry rallies the few honest men left in Bottleneck and forms a posse to take down Kent and his crew, holed up in the saloon like it’s a fortress. Destry’s got a plan of his own: he sneaks in through the roof, looking for Kent. Meanwhile, Frenchy steps in, rallying the townswomen to march between the two groups to keep them from tearing each other apart. The women storm the saloon, overwhelm the gang, and take down Kent’s men without spilling more blood. But Kent slips away, takes aim at Destry from the balcony—Frenchy jumps in the way, takes the bullet, and dies saving Destry. Destry doesn’t hesitate; he fires back, killing Kent.

Some time later, Bottleneck’s cleaned up, lawful and civil. Destry, now the sheriff, sits with the town’s kids, spinning old Dimsdale’s stories of the town’s wilder days, adding his own wink about marrying Janice. Seems there’s a new Bottleneck now, and it might just stick.

From Glamour to Grit

The genius of Destry Rides Again is that it taps into 1939’s well of daring and reinvention, while wrapped up in Hollywood’s most hallowed conventions—the Western, that quintessentially American genre. In a year brimming with cinematic landmarks like Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Stagecoach, this film didn’t merely entertain; it redefined what the Western could be, straddling genres with a new irreverence that made it both commercially and culturally irresistible. The film’s comedy, grit, and unexpected touches, like a pacifist sheriff and a saloon-singer heroine with hidden depths, draw us in with a rawness that still feels fresh today.

It’s hard to overstate the transformative effect Destry Rides Again had on Universal’s output, and not just in terms of bankable formulas. After the surprising success of this “hoss-opry,” Universal began churning out comedy-westerns like no tomorrow, each one chasing the magic cocktail of laughs and cowboy machismo that Destry nailed so well. James Stewart’s Destry, for instance, was a revelation. At a time when Western heroes were more trigger-happy than introspective, here was a peacekeeper with a startling take on justice. Stewart almost wasn’t cast as Destry at all—the role was offered first to Gary Cooper, who wanted more money than Universal was willing to pay. But when director George Marshall coaxed Stewart into those cowboy boots, the result was nothing short of a revelation. Stewart’s physical awkwardness somehow made him more convincing as the wide-eyed Destry Jr., earnest, eager, and simmering with a quiet intensity that redefined the Western hero.

And then there’s Marlene Dietrich as Frenchy. By 1938, she a fallen goddess in an era when actresses past their peak were unceremoniously sidelined. Dietrich’s Frenchy, a saloon singer-cum-grifter with “that look” and a cigarette-roll honed to perfection, struts through the Last Chance Saloon with an insolence that’s as charming as it is powerful. When she first appears, she’s perched on the bar belting out “Little Joe the Wrangler” with gusto, her tousled curls framing a devil-may-care grin. Her persona in Destry is both self-aware and gleefully unpolished, setting her apart from her early roles. Later, Destry teases her, saying, “I'll bet you've got kind of a lovely face under all that paint, huh? Why don't you wipe it off someday and have a good look—and figure out how you can live up to it.” In this film, Dietrich doesn’t just live up to it; she makes her “lovely face” part of Frenchy’s charm.

Destry Rides Again (1939) | Distributed by Universal Pictures

The film’s famous fight scene between Dietrich and Una Merkel is a testament to the actress’s grit and determination. No stunt doubles were called in, and both women tackled the brawl without a single choreographed move. Merkel later described Dietrich as “very powerful,” admitting that Dietrich’s stiletto heels had left her permanently damaged, with toenails that never quite grew back. “I looked like an old peach—green with brown spots,” Merkel recounted, after Stewart doused the actresses with buckets of water, a stunt repeated so many times that Merkel lost track. The fight was a far cry from Dietrich’s cool elegance in earlier films. Here, she’s pure wildcat, scratching and slapping her way through the saloon, snarling, “All or nothin’, I always say.”

Interestingly, the film’s risqué humour extended beyond the fight. In a cut scene, Dietrich’s character Frenchy patted her bosom and declared, “There’s gold in them thar hills,” a line that had audiences howling before the censors axed it. It’s moments like these that capture the film’s audacious, sometimes crude humor—a self-aware wink that subverts Dietrich’s image as the regal Berlin siren and grounds her character in the earthy setting of Bottleneck.

What makes Destry a masterpiece is its brilliant balancing act between drama and satire. George Marshall’s direction allows it to hover somewhere between farce and morality play, with each character taking on archetypal roles only to subvert them. Washington Dimsdale (Charles Winninger), the reformed drunk and appointed sheriff, sobers up just long enough to call on Destry for help. He plays up his slobbering antics only to reveal a serious side when he tells Destry, “Oh, Tom! Look here! Look at this post! Soaked through and through with the blood of Sawtooth McGhee.” When Destry asks if McGhee and his petticoat-wearing neighbor were buried together, Dimsdale’s reply—“No! Sawtooth and the neighbor! And four innocent bystanders!”—captures the film’s tonal balancing act.

And then there’s Mischa Auer as Boris, a Russian immigrant who loses his trousers to Frenchy in a card game. Later, he grumbles, “All I want is to be a cowboy and to wear my own pants!” Universal’s roster of character actors enriched the town of Bottleneck with comic eccentricity, creating a tapestry of Western types gone slightly askew so that while the setting is recognizably a Western, its dynamics are fresh and slightly surreal.

The film’s moral backbone is carried by Stewart’s soft-spoken Destry, a character who refuses to be drawn into gunplay despite Bottleneck’s lawless temptations. When a hot-headed Jack Tyndall tries to take the law into his own hands, Destry calmly tells him, “Nobody's gonna set themselves up above the law around here, ya understand?” When Dimsdale accuses Destry of going soft, Destry’s response is haunting: “My pa had these guns on that day in Tombstone when he got shot in the back. Didn't seem to do him much good, did they?” Stewart’s own eventual embrace of violence is saved for the end, making his decision not a crumbling of principle but a tactical shift, an approach that would later be adopted by countless Westerns, including the hysterically irreverent Blazing Saddles (1974), with Madeline Kahn as the unmistakable Frenchy homage.

Frenchy Would Give Coco a Run...

For all its grit, Destry doesn’t shy away from a surprising bit of proto-feminism in its climax. As the male townsfolk prepare for a shootout, it’s Frenchy and the townswomen who march into the saloon, standing as a human barricade between the posse and Kent’s gang. “Are you women crazy? Get back!” Kent shouts, only to be drowned out by the women’s resolve. Their intervention stops a bloodbath, and the image of women wielding enough collective force to avert violence was virtually unprecedented in Westerns up to that point. Later, in films like Westward the Women (1951), we see hints of Destry’s feminist twist echoed as women band together to overcome the odds in the untamed frontier.

One of the film’s greatest achievements is what it doesn’t say outright. Beneath the comic surface lies a deep mistrust of mob justice, and the portrayal of Bottleneck—a town in disarray, its citizens complicit or cowed into submission by power—is almost a foreshadowing of the American West’s decline in post-war Westerns. Destry isn’t a simple morality tale, nor is it a full satire. It’s a Western that dances on the edge, delivering its shots with humor, music, and a touch of European wit courtesy of Dietrich, all without abandoning the genre’s dusty soul. Destry muses at one point, “I think I’ll stick around. Y’know, I had a friend once used to collect postage stamps. He always said the one good thing about a postage stamp: it always sticks to one thing ‘til it gets there, y’know? I’m sorta like that too.”

In Destry, characters often take a moment to reflect, whether it’s Dimsdale, who realizes, “Maybe Destry knows what he’s a-doin’,” or Frenchy, who quips, “The longer they wait, the better they like it.” The result is a film that feels self-aware, playful, and yet quietly profound. In the final moments, Destry, who has now brought order to Bottleneck, hints at settling down, speaking of marriage to Janice Tyndall with his usual touch of wry humor: “I had a friend once…” he begins, his drawl warm, trailing off as he turns to face the town he’s just set right.

Destry Rides Again endures not only as a product of its time but as a film that subtly subverts the Western genre itself. It’s a Western where the hero carries no gun, the heroine wields the greatest power, and the town is saved not by a sheriff’s lone showdown but by the collective courage of its citizens. While Destry may have started as a pulp novel adaptation, its layered production, the performances of Stewart and Dietrich, and its sly winks at genre conventions transformed it into something rare and unforgettable—a Western-Comedy that, in true Hollywood style, still has something to say.

Destry Rides Again (1939) | Distributed by Universal Pictures

The Reward of Reinvention

Destry Rides Again came to life through a curious journey of adaptation, reinvention, and Hollywood pragmatism. It began with the Western writer Max Brand, who had penned Destry Rides Again as a novel and "Twelve Peers" as a pulp serial. In Brand’s original vision, Harrison Destry was no pacifist, and in Universal’s first crack at the story, the 1932 version starring Tom Mix, the hero wielded six-shooters. But the 1939 remake would upend these conventions, stripping Destry of his guns and making him a man who resists violence until there’s no other choice—a reinvention that would prove essential to both James Stewart’s Hollywood career and the film’s unique position in the Western genre.

For Stewart, it was an uncharacteristic departure, his first-ever Western and a role he seemed born to play, even though audiences would have to wait over a decade before he saddled up again in Winchester '73. As Destry, Stewart’s easygoing, almost disarming approach turned the Western hero on its head. His performance was unexpectedly magnetic, threading boyish charm with a simmering intensity. This was a sheriff who was as quick with a whittled napkin ring as with a stern warning, and who, despite refusing to draw a gun, brought a strange kind of moral weight to a town ruled by brawlers and gunslingers. If Stewart seemed like the quintessential Western hero, it’s because he was working from a script that defied tradition, and it was a formula that would echo throughout his future Westerns.

As Frenchy, Dietrich was a revelation—a smoky-voiced chanteuse who made rolling cigarettes and brawling look like art. Her relationship with Stewart off-screen, reportedly passionate and short-lived, added a real-world chemistry that crackled through their scenes together.

Destry Rides Again hit theaters in late 1939, with Marlene Dietrich back on American screens and Stewart just beginning to capture the public’s imagination with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Critics and audiences embraced the film wholeheartedly. Frank S. Nugent in The New York Times noted how the film cast Dietrich and Stewart against type, marveling at how Stewart’s likable drawl and Dietrich’s streetwise turn “did not follow the usual Hollywood type-casting.” Dietrich, who had last been seen as an angelic figure in Ernst Lubitsch’s Angel, now gave herself over to the unglamorous grit of Frenchy, a transformation Nugent noted with surprise and delight. And audiences were equally captivated. They came to see Dietrich return, to marvel at Stewart in cowboy boots, and to revel in the almost slapstick brawl between Frenchy and Lily Belle. The film became Universal’s biggest hit that year, proving that Pasternak’s gamble on Dietrich and his reimagining of Destry had paid off.

It generated a media sensation, thanks in no small part to Dietrich and Stewart’s on-set affair. Dietrich’s biographer, Steven Bach, and even her daughter, Maria Riva, have confirmed the romance, while Stewart remained politely evasive, famously declaring that “we all fell in love with her.” One can feel the undercurrents of this attraction in their scenes together—the tension is palpable, even as Destry tries to keep Frenchy at arm’s length. But Dietrich as Frenchy makes restraint impossible; she embodies not only the temptress but a tragic hero, her climactic death giving Destry the tonal shift that elevates it from comedy to something deeply moving.

It was the comeback Dietrich needed. After the “box office poison” fiasco, she returned triumphant, a “goddess with feet of clay,” just as von Sternberg had envisioned. Her barroom song routines, her gut-wrenching brawl with Merkel, and her ultimate sacrifice for Stewart’s Destry sealed her image as Hollywood’s immortal tough girl. And today, as Destry fades into the dusty streets, there’s still something of Frenchy left—her voice calling from the Last Chance Saloon, her presence lingering in the cultural fabric of the American West.

Universal milked the Destry formula for years, releasing a nearly identical remake, Destry (1954), with Audie Murphy and Thomas Mitchell in Stewart and Winninger’s roles. Stewart reprised his part in a 1945 Lux Radio Theater adaptation alongside Joan Blondell. Later, Destry Rides Again was adapted into a 1959 Broadway musical with Andy Griffith and Dolores Gray, and a brief 1964 television series starred John Gavin. Each iteration, however, lacked the strange magic of the original—the unique chemistry between Stewart and Dietrich, the masterstroke of casting Stewart as a pacifist hero, and the film’s deft balance between comedy and the Western’s grit.

The legacy of Destry Rides Again extends even further, bleeding into pop culture and setting up tropes that would become staples in later Westerns and their parodies. Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles famously parodied Destry’s sensibility, with Madeline Kahn’s unforgettable turn as Lili Von Shtupp—an homage to Dietrich’s Frenchy so precise it made Dietrich’s own legend seem even more mythic. The film’s feminist undertones, with Frenchy and the townswomen organizing a nonviolent showdown, would resurface in other films, such as William Wellman’s Westward the Women (1951), which showcased women taking control in a world dominated by frontier masculinity.

Destry Rides Again solidified Stewart’s cowboy credibility and allowed Dietrich to redefine herself, proving that even the Hollywood Western, a genre often mired in formula, could surprise us all. And just as Tom Destry tells one last tale to a Bottleneck youngster, viewers are left with an unmistakable aftertaste—Destry Rides Again, for all its laughter and gun smoke, still feels hauntingly relevant. In the hands of Pasternak, Marshall, Stewart, and Dietrich, Destry doesn’t just ride; it gallops, a film as strange and invigorating as its stars.

“I made you into a goddess. Now show them you have feet of clay.” Josef von Sternberg to Marlene Dietrich

Coda: Takeaway

So here’s the takeaway for luxury executives: you can’t sit on the laurels of past icons and expect to win over this generation. The future of luxury won’t be dictated by diamonds or leather, but by brands willing to break with tradition and follow culture wherever it decides to go. As I finish editing this book on a certain cinema history—where this particular allegory was born—it feels as obvious as ever: the way forward isn’t in clinging to sequins, but in finding the courage to embrace the grit of grand myth-making.

Luxury isn’t about preserving a tradition of wealth; it’s about creating new desires and shared dreams. And if Marlene Dietrich could shake off her own gilded trappings to find something fresh, so too can an industry on the edge.


Written by Gregory Gray , CEO and Founder of Summit Communication Group - "Two Aces In Bottleneck: Destry Rides Again" is an excerpt from Greg's upcoming book "The Great American Art: A Century of the Western in Cinema and its Influence".

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Claudio Navarro

CEO at TacticaTeam | Transforming Challenges into Opportunities | Global Business Connector

1mo

Another brilliant, spot-on piece, Gregory Gray! Your articles are always a masterclass in luxury insights—engaging, informative, and as transformative as the industry itself. Reinventing luxury with the timeless allure of Marlene Dietrich is pure genius. Can't wait to see what you spotlight next!

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Daniel Novela

Corporate M&A & Art Law Attorney | Founder of Alevon | Adjunct Professor | NovelaWatch Collectors Club Founder | Complex Asset Acquisition & Divestiture Specialist

1mo

fascinating piece of history, with lessons for the present

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David Kusin

Author of "Art as an Asset in the 21st Century." Available on the Barnes & Noble & Amazon publishing platforms.

1mo

reinvention must make full use of the unique, brand-new tools invented only in the past 10-12 years – the use of which is mandatory for drafting a successful blueprint for deep change. prior suppositions and templates are irrelevant.

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