Check out this new advert for PRADA, made by Roman Polanski, starring Ben Kingsley and Helena Bonham-Carter. The implication is the therapist, once intended to free their patients from false illusions like consumerism, becomes himself seduced by the luxury experience. Because it isn’t an illusion – glamour is real (such is the message anyway).

It also fetishises the experience of therapy – the wealthy attractive heiress kicking off her PRADA shoes to recline seductively on the therapeutic couch, to indulge the luxury of talking about herself and her inner world (even if the therapist is actually far more interested in her outer accoutrements than her inner world). Luxury as therapy / therapy as luxury.  How deliciously bourgeois.