L’Imaginaire du luxe
The luxury industry, often seen as the jewel in the crown of France’s traditional craft sector, cannot be reduced to one single simplistic definition that reads it purely as a social distinction strategy espoused by the elite.
What does luxury mean in 2016? It cannot just be a product that is rare and expensive. Maybe it means consuming more than is strictly necessary, or a product that many lust after but few will ever own.
Whatever the case, it is clear that luxury is an anthropological construction rooted in the social imaginary that varies from age to age, one constant perhaps being that it always means the price of things that are priceless.
So, is it a means of combating existential anguish, a recurrent quest for a nocturnal imaginary, or a way of imbuing the world with romance?
How concepts of luxury result from the imaginary of a particular era is the topic of this debate, chaired by Michel Maffesoli with guests Frédéric Monneyron, Professor of Sociology at the University of Perpignan and co-author with Patrick Mathieu of L’Imaginaire du luxe (Imago, 2015), and Aurélien Fouillet, researcher at CEAQ (the Sorbonne’s Centre for the Study of Contemporary Everyday Life) and member of the editorial board for the Cahiers Européens de l’Imaginaire, which brought out a special issue on luxury in 2010.