Living It Up

Living It Up: Our Love Affair with Luxury
James Twitchell

A Literature Review


“Luxury is the necessity that begins where necessity ends.” –Coco Chanel


Author James Twitchell uncovers the history and reasons behind our society’s obsession with luxury goods in Living It Up: Our Love Affair with Luxury. In his field research (shopping on Rodeo Drive, submitting himself to Vegas charms…) and his academic inquiry (from Rousseau to Duchamp to Chanel), he gains insights in a neutral tone, without any judgement, and may even be a little sympathetic at times towards this movement. He gives a fair dissection of luxury-themed ads, follows literary figures and key historic events that led to the democratization of luxury, and even posits “how ironic materialism may be doing the work of idealism” (p. xiii).

I wanted to find some grand answer in his writings. I was hoping that if I knew exactly why we lust after luxury, I would be able to cure it. With insights such as “the new luxury objects: it is not meaningless; if anything, it is too meaningful” (p. 54), and “this is a revolution not of necessities but of wants. In fact, getting to cake has become one of the central unifying concerns of people around the globe” (p. xi), I thought this book was right on track. Maybe we do enter the “global village” by having dessert. Yet we have altogether skipped certain levels on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, sometimes compromising on the physiological and safety tiers for esteem and self-actualization through these quests for luxury. This cannot be right. So then Twitchell delves into the history of how we have evolved to be this way.

Firstly, how does one define its existence?
To a modern moralists it is an indulgence.
To economists: the value of luxury goods results from inelastic demand.
To stoics: results from abhorring simplicity.
To socialists: what happens when the wrong class consumes it.
To clerics: what comes from pride and ends in gluttony.
To liberals: false needs are the problem.
To Marxists: it comes from reified consciousness.
To semioticians: it is material oversignified with meaning.
And to architects? Exclusive and excellent design. And nice clients.

From Plato to the early Christians to the Renaissance, luxury was thought to weaken the being, an excess extravagance. Sumptuary laws were in place as part of an elaborate symbolic system designed to keep class demarcations in place (as discussed in The Fall of Public Man, Richard Sennett). However, during the Renaissance, the concept of objet d’art arose, meaning the things thought worthy of being painted. So even before the Industrial Revolution, there was a desire to show material goods off, as markers of social dominance. However, it was still attached to the deeply seeded taboo of consuming out of your class. But as the wealth spread, and necessities were more easily met, people sought after “the esteem and envy of fellow men” and that it was “awarded only on evidence”, as Thorstein Veblen had once said. It was a conundrum though, this “evidence” because there is no rational system. Luxury is a social construction and “it has become a characteristic contradiction of our time, the necessary consumption of the unnecessary” (p. 39). And many positional goods are valued not despite of how much it costs but because of it.

I have always known that value does not reside in objects but rather in the perception of objects. And that value is contagious, working in the same model as a culture of bacteria on a Petri dish: the initial inoculation of low numbers, the slow inception, the rise to exponential figures, to a plateau population of pure saturation, until it dies due to over-congestion. And that shoppers are willing to pay at different “price points”, depending on how much Gucci/Louis Vuitton/Versace is in a product. That is why easily visible goods like tshirts, shoes, dark sunglasses, watches, handbags and luggage are the best inventory that is able to let their owner unload the logo onto onlookers. In architecture, they may be telling a story of a sculptural symphony of titanium but really people see it as the museum being rich enough to have a Gehry in their city. But strangely enough, it also works in reverse proportion, where value is diluted if the logo noise is loud. The absence of obvious indications means connoisseurship is needed to read the code of luxury. For example, the single red line for Prada. And architecture works on this level too, with details that are signature to a particular architect that are left for fellow designers to decode.

However, Twtichell brings up the possible psychological theory behind it. The theory of why we do things separates into telic and paratelic:

1.Telic (arousal reducing) – anxious to resolve need, and if successful, anxiousness abates
2.Paratelic (arousal seeking) – begins in state of well-being, edging to boredom and seeks excitement

And by consuming luxury, many people have gone from the telic motivation to the paratelic, from product to process, object to experience. This means that instead of a problem resolution, it becomes a matter of emotion-seeking. And this completely makes sense with the fact that consumers are rational and they fully realize that there are consuming the aura rather than the object. They actively seek and enjoy the status that is in and of this object. In this way, Twitchell makes the big leap of comparing relgion with luxury: “Spiritualism is more likely a substitute when objects are scarce. When we have few things, we make the next world luxurious. When we have plenty, we enchant the objects around us. The hereafter becomes the here and now” (p. 38). Now it seems clear that consuming at the top-of-the-line stratum can definitely send waves of self-satisfaction, maybe even at the intensity of an epiphany.

One criticism would be that perhaps Twitchell is too focused on physical goods alone. In the recent past, there has been the tendency to purchase ephemeral transient experiences such as eco-tours, alternative and/or indie concerts and films, etc. All these types of procurements are, at their most basic level, a way to boost the status and feeling of moral and/or ethical superiority of the purchaser. Another example is the new surge of organic “green” goods. Many labels are just slapping buzz words on the packaging so as to promote a mediocre unfounded feeling of self-esteem that purchasing this product does the environment some good. The genuine action would be just to consume less in general. But this is the democracy of the new luxury. Everything can appear to be diamonds when really, they’re just cubic zirconia. As this old standard of luxury outdates itself, perhaps the only real luxury that stands is this:

“…real luxury is characterized not by shine but by patina. That its allure comes from inborn aesthetics, not from glitzy advertising, that it is passed from generation to generation and cannot be bought at the mall, and most of all, that its consumption is private, not conspicuous. In fact, maybe the rich only have two genuine luxury items left: time and philanthropy.” (p.23)

Well, at least for this thesis, I can afford some time.