For Net-a-Porter, a London-based e-tailer of luxury-brand women's wear, the Great Recession wasn't even a speed bump. "We actually outperformed our own business plan. Sales were exceptional," says Natalie Massenet, the company's American founder and executive chairman. Its sales soared 53% in 2008. That recession-be-damned kind of growth prompted Swiss luxury-goods conglomerate Richemont, which already owned a third of the company, to buy the rest in a deal last April that valued it at $568 million at the time. In ...

In the late 1980s, Pier Luigi Loro Piana was in a bind. As a chief executive of the Italian luxury-fashion company Loro Piana, he wanted to offer his customers the finest animal fiber in the world: the hair of the vicua, a small llama-like creature native to the high plains of the Peruvian Andes. The problem was that the animal was listed as endangered, its fleece subject to an international embargo. The solution he came up with was to become involved ...

Sorrento Pointe, Calif., does not look like the setting for the death of the American Dream. From outside the tasteful guardhouse stationed at the entrance of this gated community about 23 miles from downtown Los Angeles, all seems peaceful. The manicured lawns are a verdant oasis within the surrounding sun-scorched mountains. The only sound disturbing the quiet is the gentle swish of luxury cars — Mercedes, BMWs and Porsches — as their drivers turn homeward. However, that sense ...

Fed up with the delays, cattle seating, security lines and inferior food associated with air travel? Then join the growing number of holidaymakers getting around by rail. Luxury trains offer golden-age-of-travel perks for prices that don't rise with every lurch in the price of oil. They've been jazzed up with wi-fi and DVD players and offer a more intimate connection with a destination. "Trains go right through the center of communities rather than being 30,000 feet in ...

Versace, the favoured brand of celebrities such as Elton John and Jennifer Lopez, is pulling out of Japan after nearly 30 years -- highlighting the depth of the consumer slump in one of the world's largest luxury markets. The Italian fashion house has closed all three directly owned shops in Japan and is expected to shut its Tokyo business office at the end of the month. The company's retreat reflects Japan's diminishing role as a consumer of luxury goods such ...

A train carrying Rahul Gandhi, the heir apparent of India's ruling Congress party, was pelted with stones Tuesday night, police said. Gandhi was traveling on one of India's Shatabdi Express trains -- fully air-conditioned, speedy trains preferred mostly by India's wealthy and upper-class travelers. Gandhi's train was hit by stones -- and at least two windows were broken -- as it passed through a village en route to the capital of New Delhi from Punjab state, a spokesman for Haryana ...

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and ...

The Rancho Bernardo Inn, a San Diego luxury resort, is offering rooms for $19 a night. But there's a catch -- you have to sleep in a tent and bring your own toilet paper. The declining economy has taken a toll on the Rancho Bernardo, a 200,000 acre luxury resort which has three pools, a golf course, three restaurants and a spa that was named No. 1 by Conde Naste in 2008. "During a brainstorming session, we were talking about ...

Things can't get much worse for many of the world's top luxury brands. This week Coach, the high-end handbag seller, announced that profits slumped 32% for the quarter. Same-store sales at Saks were down 23.2% in the first five months of this fiscal year. BMW's U.S. sales are off 28.9%. Bain & Company, the consulting firm, is forecasting a record 10% drop in the overall U.S. luxury market this year. According to Bain, luxury won't fully recover until 2012. ...

The conventional but sophisticated modus operandi used in twin hotel bombings prompted Indonesian officials to suspect one of the nation's most-wanted men, official media reported Saturday. Anti-terrorism officials linked Malaysian-born fugitive Noordin M. Top to the Friday bombings of the luxury JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels that killed eight people -- including two suicide bombers -- and wounded more than 50 others, reported the state-run Antara news agency. "Although the modus operandi was conventional, it was carried out in ...