I think that more and more middle class people are buying LV and they want to keep it exclusive. They keep raising the prices to make them unattainable.
I hope I don't offend anyone, but I always saw
Coach as more upper-middle class, and they're doing the same thing. It used to be that you could get a good sized bag for like $200 at Coach. At the same time they were going for like $500 at LV. Now the LVs are about $800 and a lot of the Coaches are $500.
But at least with Coach it's not quite so transparent. They change their line up all the time. New colors, new clasps, etc are always added which keeps the line fresh. When they change a price people don't notice because it's on a new line. But with LV it's the same old stuff just with higher prices. In some cases it's the same old stuff with machine stitching and or flimsier clasps (like the damier papillion) at higher prices.