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SCMP Reporter

''The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it.'' - Stanley Kubrick SOMEONE sent me the latest edition of a self-conscious glossy called The Peak, noting that this indispensable aspect of our cultural life includes no less than three photos of Nancy Jong-Miller-Richperson.

   Last year Ms Jong tied with 127 other regulars to win the Hongkong Most Insecure Person of the Year Award - Female Division.

  An infallible guide to the intellectual and aesthetic value of any publication in Hongkong is to count the number of photos of Ms Jong-Richperson and divide by two.

  That will give you the average IQ of its readership.

  There are plenty of other people you can use to perform this simple evaluation.

  There is Philippe Charriol for instance, the subject of a two-page interview in the magazine.

  There was Philippe stripped to the waist - and wearing a pair of high-waist shorts cut from Arnold Schwarzenegger's old wet suit - in a karate pose with beaming black Frenchman Jean Claude Anicet, who is billed as the 1992 European heavyweight kung fu champion.

  Philippe is a wealthy businessman who could not possibly be as silly as he looks in that photograph, poised as he is with his personal martial arts manservant about to kick him in his designer groin.

  The introduction to this interview asks the question: ''Who is he?''   OK, you've got me. Who? And I read the piece twice. It focuses on top-of-the-line hogwash and how much of it you need to flog lots of designer watches.

  Interviewer: ''You need a myth - the man, the lifestyle, the house, the car.''   Philippe: ''Yes . . . you have to develop a story, a myth, otherwise people will just buy a cheap watch.''   Interviewer: ''A cheap watch is horrible. It sends the wrong message, doesn't it?''   Philippe: ''We show some indication of who we are by what we wear.

  ''In luxury products it is of utmost importance that it can be recognised at once.''   Interviewer: ''Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Sylvester Stallone?''   Philippe: ''Oh yeah, very often.''   OK, Philippe. Let's talk about sending messages about who we are by what we wear.

   I've met Colombian gangsters who wear smarter and more expensive stuff than yours.

  But I admire your honesty in telling punters hooked on designer gear how you could sell them anything because you are an arbiter of good taste, even if your picture in Arnold's shorts confuses that signal just a wee bit.

  Phil, let's get serious. You want to know the real reason people are crazy about designer gear?    It is because they think it tells us who they are.

  They imagine we have to spend 20 years getting to know someone before we can see what is really going on inside.

  Just like they think that a couple of pages of oily flimflam and a silly photo disguises what is really going on inside you.

  I hate to be the one to break the news . . .

  This is what our image is all about. It's a loony attempt to cover up who the hell we are.

   The fact that it doesn't work, but that millions of people with money to spend think that it does, allows Philippe to have six houses, his very own resident kung fu king and a pair of Schwarzenegger's undersea cut-offs.

  Where image gets killed is by intuition.

  If we fully recognised our intuitive powers, we would find that people suddenly become transparent.

   If we stop looking and start seeing, then all the dopey designer diversions and cocktail communication no longer get in the way; the illusion is lost.

  Happily for the designer business we like to believe that our intuition or ''gut feeling'' is just something to which we can occasionally attribute a long-shot winner at the ponies.

  Get this: intuition is a highly developed survival mechanism that leaves the brain for dead when it comes to good judgement, particularly about the person who lurks behind the act; the words, the bluff, the bright and shiny image.

  No one has ever based a marriage, a business relationship, a house purchase, a big investment or a friendship on cerebral analysis or experience.

  We decide all these things on whether or not it feels right and if we trust the situation.

   If you doubt that then look back on decisions you have made where you've said to yourself: ''I don't feel all that comfortable but I'll give it or them the benefit of the doubt.''   I'll guarantee in 90 per cent of those cases you've been had.

  Intuition is great. You get to look straight through people. But we refuse to trust it, not even for something as dumb as the purchase of a new watch, we need to think about a Charriol-type myth.

  I'll leave you with Huang Po: ''The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see.'' Peter Sherwood is managing director of Edelman Public Relations, Hongkong.



Flimflam stripped bare by a little intuitive judgement