sociology of luxury

The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself. One could put this another way: the publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her

The creator of Real Housewives of Clapton had a theory for why niche consumer objects have become such potent symbols online. For millennials and Gen Z-ers, material gain is more about these small, semi-expensive life-style choices—oat milk in your latte—than about bigger ones such as buying a house or having children, which are much harder to

Modern luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly, and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four.

– Justin Welsh

You are earning a six-figure sum, and you decide to buy a house in Clapham. What this says is that you, as an immensely rich person in 2024, have no higher aspiration in life than to spend the next 25 years of your life devoting70 per cent of your discretionary income on acquiring an asset that a poor person could have owned in 1924. How is that

Imagine showing Louis XIV your life. Almost everything would amaze him. He would offer you half of Gascony for your flat-screen television. Even driving a 20-year-old car would delight him. The Palace of Versailles consumed more water than the city of Paris, yet the cleanliness of your water supply would still astound him, as would your flushable

If we imagine a future where the majority of people have smoothed their wrinkles away with Botox, plumped up their lips with filler, sucked out their cheeks with buccal fat removal and straightened their teeth with veneers, will it become desirable to have the natural features that are becoming increasingly rare; the crooked teeth, the smile lines