PERSONAL LUXURY

WE ALL EXPECT QUALITY, RARITY AND AUTHENTICITY IN OUR PERSONAL DEFINITION OF LUXURY

The commercialization and democratization of luxury have wrested its control from the hands of the elite. Traditionally, superfluity was the bubbling core of luxury, defined as that which exceeds the minimum requirement. Today, what used to be associated with the dominant class has become, by necessity, something that everyone could aspire to or at least have a personal version of. Hence, Luxury Lite. Purveyors of luxury have created many versions of it for different socio-economic groups until there is no single reference for what is truly luxurious. This is not completely insidious; after all, there is a market hankering for a break from the mundane. We are all assured of the freedom to dream of something better, and the idea of luxury within reach fulfills that. Luxury editions of the ordinary have to be developed so that it’s no longer enough to quench your thirst with potable water – you have to be drinking the signature liquid from a deep well in a sacred location in a mountain in Peru. So luxury has been moving forward in a dialectic fashion of theses and antitheses, each being held for several decades or so until we get tired of it and decide on something else. Yet through the centuries, no matter what fashion mongers tall us, values such as quality, authenticity, uniqueness and rarity, emotional and artistic inputs have signified luxury. Whether we are holding luxury products in our hands or experiencing luxury service in our activity, they remain there.