Director’s Cut: Luxury

Luxury is enticing and exciting, polarizing and provocative, not to mention that it is good for the economy. But the essence of luxury goes far beyond the material. Luxury appeals to our senses, our dreams and our desires. It immediately evokes images that are as precise as they are diverse. Luxury also triggers some pretty clear opinions – both favorable and unfavorable.

On closer inspection, however, the matter is usually not that clear-cut. And something like luxury research, which attempts to systematically and objectively explore the phenomenon, does not yet exist.

For good reason. And good thing, too!

Because like everything beautiful and sensuous, luxury cannot be measured, physically verified or defined in terms of objective properties. Luxury is simply more than a status symbol or some superficial token of prosperity. Luxury is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon that mixes high price and high quality together with exclusivity and symbolic meaning, aesthetics and lifestyle to create an irresistible cocktail of luxurious pleasure.

Far removed from the normal, the useful, the necessary. With luxury status determined mainly subjectively on the basis of personal and cultural circumstances.

Seen like this, luxury is a special moment and a beautiful, very personal and very positive experience. We break with reason and logic, with the usual and appropriate. We give in to indulgence, do something for ourselves, experience ourselves in a self-determined way. We feel good. Because luxury is autonomy and freedom. Self-fulfilment and authenticity.

It lets us be completely with ourselves. Sociologist Werner Sombart once described luxury as any expenditure in excess of the necessary.

Perfect! So we took his definition of luxury and made it the guiding principle for this book project. In the spirit of luxury, the stories and contributions were developed without the usual pretense of perfection and all-knowing expertise, but with a decidedly subjective eye for what we hope will be a very special and thought-provoking reading experience.