If you want to join their club, it helps to know a few names.

Have you ever paged through a high-end fashion magazine or luxury lifestyle magazine and come across brand names you didn’t know how to pronounce?

If you don’t speak French or Italian, chances are you can’t correctly say hundreds of luxury and fashion brand names.

Here are some names that come to mind. See how many you’re absolutely positive you know how to say correctly. No guesses allowed.

BADGLEY MISCHKA, BVLGARI, CHOPARD, DOLCE & GABBANA, GIVENCHY, HERMES, HERVE LEGER, JAEGER-LeCOULTRE, LANVIN, LOUIS VUITTON, MIU MIU, MOSCHINO, ROCHAS, TAG HEUER, VACHERON CONSTANTIN

I suspect that billions of people around the globe have no clue how to pronounce these luxury and haute couture names.

Assuming I’m correct, why is that? Why have companies intentionally created linguistic barriers between their brands and billions of people who could theoretically buy their goods?

It’s because unlike mass brands, luxury brands aren’t meant for everybody. Or even large segments of the public. They’re meant to be exclusive. In fact, if a luxury brand were to be seen as anything but highly exclusive, it would lose its appeal and no longer be considered a true luxury brand.

A luxury brand is a differentiated product that offers symbolic meaning. It makes a statement about your status and your sense of style. It exists in order to appeal to a very limited number of discerning customers.

And its name is an extremely powerful clue that a given luxury brand is only for those customers who are in the know, who are among the chosen, who are part of the club.

If you don’t know how to say a luxury brand’s name correctly, you are, by definition, not a member of the club.

So in effect, luxury companies use their brand names as one way to help screen and choose a highly selective clientele. If you’re the right kind of person with the right kind of knowledge and taste, and if you’re willing to pay an extraordinary amount of money, you receive the promise of belonging to a certain exclusive group.

And for many people, that appeal is irresistible.

For those of us who aren’t in the club, here’s how to pronounce the names above along with many others, 50 in all. Pronunciation suggestions came from several sources; my particular thanks go to Harper’s Bazaar UK (August 2013) and WatchTime Magazine.