Chapter 1
The Concept of Luxury

The word luxury has always been a source of discussion of what it is supposed to mean. This is the reason we added this chapter in the second edition of this book and have kept it since then. Since we are going to write about luxury along with text and diagrams, it only makes sense to explore the intricacies of what is meant by such a popular word. In this fourth edition we have added a section on the meaning of the expression new luxury, whose usage has been growing in the past few years.

A Problematic Definition

What is luxury? At first glance, it seems that we can answer in simple terms and to distinguish between what is luxury and what does not fall into it. But we sense, on reflection, that not everyone will agree on this distinction: luxury to one is not necessarily luxury to another.

The concept of luxury incorporates an aesthetic dimension that refers to a major theme of Western philosophy: How to characterize the notion of beauty?1 In the twentieth century, the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno expressed the problem in these terms: "We cannot define the concept of beautiful nor give up its concept."2 We believe that it is the same for luxury: without wanting to confuse it with the beautiful, it turns out, upon examination, no less elusive, and, perhaps, not less indispensable.

Therefore, it is probably unrealistic to seek a universal definition of luxury. But this reflection draws our attention to an initial important point: the definition of luxury has varied over time.

A Fluctuating Notion

What we commonly call luxury no longer has much to do with what was meant only a century ago; or, a little further back, in the years before the Industrial Revolution. We are not talking here about objects of luxury. A product like soap, for example, although a real luxury in the Middle Ages, has become largely democratic since then, and it has therefore ceased to be a luxury in our eyes. Today, the word has a very different meaning from how it was used, for example, in the seventeenth century. It connotes for us both positive and negative images; most of the negative images are derived from its historical heritage, while positive images are for the most of a recent introduction.

As we will see, the term has experienced, particularly in the past two centuries, important semantic changes that reflect the construction of our modern consumer society. These transformations are of great interest for our subject: they had direct impact on the progressive segmentation of the global luxury market and on the current positioning of brands claiming this territory.

The Paradox of Contemporary Luxury

Today's luxury market is based on a paradox. On the one hand, luxury operates as a social distinction; it is the sign of a practice reserved for the "happy few" and thus circumvents the masses. At the same time, contemporary luxury is promoted by the brands, and they remain linked to the logics of volume of production and distribution. How, therefore, can we reconcile exclusivity with the industrial and commercial logics of volume? Such is the dilemma for luxury brands, which each brand will try to solve by adjusting its positioning through innovative strategies of creation, communication, and distribution.

Even though it may not necessarily appear as such at first glance, contemporary luxury, in fact, presents an extensive and highly contrasted landscape. In order to grasp this complexity, a step back is needed; this is a historical detour that will allow us to comprehend it.

Chronicle of a Semantic Evolution

Luxury is a keyword whose use is becoming more frequent in our daily lives. We read it more often in all brand communication; we use it more often in our discourses (on the Internet, Google Trends shows that its use has increased by more than 30% on average between 2004 and 2020). There are two reasons for this increase:

1. Brands have realized that this (sometimes only apparent) positioning adds to their competitiveness.
2. On the other hand, a majority of consumers have developed a positive attitude toward the products, services, or experiences connoted by this feature.

We live in a world where luxury reigns. But the word itself was not born yesterday-definitions have accumulated for centuries. Since Plato, Epicurus, Veblen, Rousseau, and Voltaire, up to today's opinion leaders, the production and use of signs of wealth have always intrigued the philosophers, sociologists, and observers of their time.

The word luxury, as we understand it today, inherited this accumulation of proposals, sometimes with contradictory meanings. The acceleration of the number of definitions in the past 20 years comes to prove the growing current interest for the question.

Modern Dispersion

In order to measure this abundance of meanings, we may note the growing number of expressions that, today, use it. The term now needs articles and adjectives to clarify its meanings.

Here are a few modern examples: authentic luxury is quite frequent as an expression and we will discuss it further; luxury and grand luxury was advertised by the great car designer Battista Pininfarina (lusso e gran lusso) on a 1931 poster where a car was presented on a pedestal like in a museum. This is an interesting segmentation, where already lies the idea of a form of an affordable luxury suitable for all budgets. More recently, the economist Danielle Allérès extrapolated the common sense of Pininfarina suggesting a distinction between accessible, intermediate, and inaccessible luxuries. Even luxury yogurt is spreading in food marketing. We hear more and more in casual talks and in advertising the expression "my luxury"-which is not yours and has the defect of not constituting a market on its own.

Ostentatious luxury or "bling-bling" has long been present in the media. It may evoke a traditional luxury that is opposed, of course, to the new luxury, and so on. Social or even academic trends regularly provide their lot of new expressions on the subject.

Two relevant points can be detected in this diversity. The first is that to each his own luxury: the concept has ceased to mark a boundary between opulence and economic discomfort-it is now a sign that needs additional specific attributes to perform its function of distinction in a human group. This ability of luxury to indefinitely segment the markets shows us how it has been able to blend, by transforming itself, in our modern civilization of mass consumption.

The second point is that this modern luxury appears to carry rather positive connotations. Obviously, it also has its excesses, its indecency; however, the fact that we can now speak of luxury in positive terms already certifies a remarkable semantic evolution. In order to measure this evolution, we must return to the etymology.

Etymology and Transformations

The word luxury comes from the Latin luxus, which means "grow askew, excess." Its root is an old Indo-European word that meant "twist." In the same family, we find "luxuriant" (yielding abundantly) and "luxation" (dislocation). In short, the term originally refers to something of the order of aberration: it is almost devoid of any positive connotation.

We have used the dictionary Le trésor de la langue française informatisé, which offers a brief overview of two centuries of use.

• 1607: "way of life characterized by large expenditures to make shows of elegance and refinement"
• 1661: "character of which is expensive, refined," luxury clothing
• 1797: "expensive and superfluous object, pleasure"
• 1801: "excessive quantity," a luxury of vegetation
• 1802: "which is superfluous, unnecessary"

Little by little, the notion of guilty excess disappears, while the ideas of distinction and refinement gain in strength. In the Classical Age, luxury is already full of ambiguities: speaking of women's toilette, La Fontaine relates the "instruments of luxury" to everything "which contributes not only to cleanness, but also to delicateness." This does not prevent him from condemning, moralistically, "these women who have found the secret to become old at twenty years, and seem young at sixty."3 Around the same time, the grammarian Pierre Nicole wishes that "great people," by their example, deter us from "luxury, blasphemy, debauchery, gambling, libertinage."4 In sum, the luxury already connotes sophistication, but it remains morally suspect.

At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the connotation of superfluous-which is not motivated by economic and utilitarian logic-begins consolidating. It becomes more nuanced with the advent of mass consumption and the civilization of leisure. The superfluous is not debauchery; it is beyond the commercial sphere, but it can also mark the promotion of a certain quality of life.

As for the price dimension, it appears very early and remains virtually unchanged over the years: luxury is something that is to be paid for.

From the same French dictionary, we see that current usages of the word "luxury" show evolutionary meanings: the...