Buchanan breakdown

Luxury is an inadvertent shortcut to find meaning in a transitory world.
and
Luxury is always socially constructed.

Desire and value comes not from an isolated individual but is the act of unconscious collusion. (208, Twitchell, “Living it Up”)

and “borrowed value” is a technique that a lot of branding companies utilize.
Proximity generates worth; in other words, value leaks.

The Stendhal Syndrome is “a psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art is in a single place. The term can also be used to describe a similar reaction to a surfeit of choice in other circumstances, e.g. when confronted with immense beauty in the natural world. It is named after the famous 19th century French author Stendhal (pseudonym of Henri-Marie Beyle), who described his experience with the phenomenon during his 1817 visit to Florence, Italy in his book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio.” [wikipedia]

But there can also be more modern equivalents to this condition.

Take for example the review I wrote about Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” with Holly Golightly’s reverie’s in the store Tiffany & Co curing her of the “mean reds”:
“Not that I give a hoot about jewelry…[it’s] the quietness and the proud look of it…that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets.” (39, Capote)

or

The character of Daisy Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” after being overwhelmed by Gatsby’s luxurious collection of apparel:
“He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-coloured disarray…Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. ‘They’re such beautiful shirts’, she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ‘It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—beautiful shirts before.’” (98, Fitzgerald)

Whether a Golightly glow or a Buchanan breakdown, there is the emotional attachment to even the most confected displays of luxury. It is due to the concept of proximity to value. The fairytale-like stories that make our minds associate the self within the dream. Because value resides in the perception of the object, (as Rolling Stones coined the phrase) perception IS reality.

With all this in mind, I want to focus on how the story is told by the architecture that surrounds the luxury item. Much like how the ancient holy relic gets put in a box within an even more ornate box into another box on an alter until the entire church and even flying buttresses were formed, so is the story of the modern luxury item. The customer’s sense of perceived value is manipulated.

First I must define “new luxury”. Old style luxury is based on actually patina of old age. The notion of authenticity is upheld by official records. It stems from traditional roots of aristocracy and is a rare item. That is not to say it deserves to be valued more highly than other items, because as I mentioned before, it is still a socially constructed assumption. New luxury on the other hand is all in the marketing and packaging, because once the production is tied to machines and computers, you have to tell a story in order to separate it from the rest of the pack. And advertising, contrary to popular belief does not invent desire, it just expresses desire with the hopes of exploiting it over and over (157, Twitchell).

A perfect, if not too easy a target, is Ralph Lauren. In their flagship store on upper Madison Avenue, in the five story space of the gentrified Rhinelander mansion, there are make-believe coat of arms (Ralph Lauren was born Ralph Liftshitz from the Bronx), brushed-on patina, concocted heritage, machine-distressed leather chairs, etchings of sporting animals, bookshelves of husks of Victorian novels, the list goes on (185, Twitchell). Each polo shirt could hardly be distinguished between any other polo shirt except for the little emblem on the left breast. But the customers soak all of this in, like a set of a movie, only more real. And this is not to condemn Ralph Lauren’s ambitions or taste. Every “new luxury” store attempts to manufacture desire through its spaces. I want to explore which are the most effective ways, and what we can learn about ourselves (and our society) in the process.