A delayed postcard from my winter holidays back home, where I have taken a good break from the daily grind – but not from reflecting about luxury.
As a matter of fact, debates on luxury have been all around me:
1- during the numerous Christmas gatherings, I have been the recipient of fellow guests’ statements about their own luxury, from the “gigliuccio” embroidery stitch of tablecloths praised by elderly ladies as the “ultimate luxury of yore”, to teenagers educating me about the cool brands of today, with their parents debating whether to pander to their kids’ wishes or take the chance to teach them the value of money. My personal shopping safari put me in a similar conundrum: how much is acceptable (not only for your wallet, but also for your ethical standing) to invest in the purchase of a luxury item?
2- in my visit to museums and archaeological venues, I noticed that also museums increasingly stress their social cachet of their archaeological findings. Neolithic carved stones are now presented as our ancestors’ status symbols: an attempt to better relate on how we see things now?
3- In an interview about the cost of living crisis on the Italian TV, Paolo Bulgari stated that in an “economy of war” luxury items as we know them have become “vulgar”. This last keyword is the one that intrigued me the most, because the semantic of the term means both “related to the ordinary people” as well as “tasteless”.
I always argue that the luxury value morphs alongside changing economic and cultural values, and the resulting shifts in the social dynamics of inclusion/exclusion. I think the cost of living crisis marks another moment of interesting reflections on those topics.
I open my 2024 with the curiosity to explore the matter further, starting with a very on-point analysis by Highsnobiety on loud budgeting
https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/loud-budgeting-trend-explained/