Faiers, Jonathan (2017) Luxury. Bloomsbury Fashion Central; Fashion Photography Archive. (doi:10.5040/9781474260428-FPA145).
Abstract
Luxury and fashion today are increasingly uttered in the same breath, and while fashion certainly does not have to be luxurious, the term fashion adds a significance and meaning to everyday clothing that elevates it above its chief utilitarian functions of providing protection, warmth, and modesty. The combination luxury fashion, however, implies cost, exclusivity, indulgence, and excess, and is typically understood as being constructed from the finest materials, involving a high level of craftsmanship, laborious production, and often originating from a specific manufacturing location. Today luxury fashion is being consumed and produced on an unprecedented scale, but this very proliferation of luxury begs us to ask some important questions about fashion’s relationship to luxury, for in an age where super brands dominate the luxury fashion landscape, it might seem that as long as there are enough prominently displayed logos and the most expensive materials are used the term “luxury” can be attached to any piece of clothing. But alongside the easily identifiable, branded luxury exist other formulations and indeed interrogations of luxury, and luxury fashion now takes on many guises so that we need to consider terms such as minimal luxury, conceptual luxury, and even affordable luxury. Beyond the tidal wave of monogrammed handbags and fur linings, who are the designers who have really understood the relationship between luxury and excess, that luxury can look like poverty, and the role traditional craftsmanship plays in the production of true luxury fashion?
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