Luxury: A Rich History PDF
Preview Luxury: A Rich History
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/16, SPi LUXURY OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/16, SPi praise for luxury: a rich history ‘In this truly “rich history” Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello show us why luxury matters, why—in other words—it is not just a concern of the super-rich of past and present. Their acute and timely book explains the economics and politics of lux- ury and explores what it has meant in terms of privilege, display, and experience from ancient times to today. No previous work has tackled this complex and ever- changing phenomenon with such range and erudition or illustrated it with such a dazzling array of stories and examples. The book will be indispensable reading for anyone wishing to understand why the wealthy have always wanted to live differently and what this has signified for the rest of us.’ Stephen Gundle, author of Glamour: A History ‘Peering into the past through this informed, engaging kaleidoscope has been a great time travel. Exploring the definitions of luxury both conceptual and mate- rial as they manifest the zeitgeist of their time. The inherent contradictions of opulence versus understatement, its elusiveness, its pleasure seeking nature, objects of desire to be coveted; and how power, privacy and comfort always find their place in the dialogue on luxury.’ Charlotte Moss, author and interior designer ‘Luxury is a hot topic, not least because there is a lot of money to be made from the new global luxury consumer. Selling luxury brands rests in part on how we define the concept of luxury—is it a function of rarity, cost, authenticity, distinction, excess, pleasure? McNeil and Riello take a completely new, materialistic approach to luxury, beginning with the objects themselves—and what extraordinary objects they are! This is an absolutely fascinating book, rich in insights and pleasures.’ Valerie Steele, Director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/16, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/16, SPi 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox dp United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in Impression: All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press Madison Avenue, New York, NY , United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 5545 ISBN 7–––34– Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/16, SPi To our friends, our great luxury in life OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/16, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/16, SPi Preface and acknowledgements The genesis of the idea for this work came several years ago as we were sitting around talking during two cold winter Augusts in Sydney. While fashion has a long history and has now amassed a large body of studies, luxury—we observed—had received little attention. What seemed to be missing was an analysis of the meaning and importance of luxury across time. A decade ago, this issue would have been easily dismissed by arguing that luxury was either a niche topic—the whimsical choices of the elites—or of little interest to either serious scholars or the majority of readers. Yet, in the last few years, luxury has become a ‘hot topic’. In an age of rampant individualism, of rising economic inequality, and of puritanical attitudes to social mores, luxury has become commonplace in our daily news- papers, lamenting the vulgarity of the super-rich, in billboards advertis- ing the same commodities that are supposed to be so vulgar, and in the general desire to aim for something better, something different, and something exclusive. Yet our students have been surprised to learn that debates about luxury had a long history reaching far back in time and place. The topic of luxury seemed so connected to the fashion studies and material culture that we often studied and taught, sometimes using alternate words, that we began to ask where the ‘luxury debate’ had gone in recent years. We worked on establishing a research network, which was generously funded by the Lever- hulme Trust. Over the two years of its activity, the International Network ‘Luxury and the Manipulation of Desire’, coordinated by Giorgio Riello and Rosa Salzberg at the University of Warwick, allowed collaboration with Glenn Adamson, Marta Ajmar, Christropher Breward, Jonathan Faiers, vii OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/16, SPi preface and acknowledgements Catherine Kovesi, Peter McNeil, Luca Molà, Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Ulinka Rublack, Bill Sherman, John Styles, and Qing Wang. We are grateful to all of them and the dozens of scholars who joined us at events organized in London (V&A and The Shard), Coventry (University of Warwick), Bol- ogna (the University of Bologna), and Florence (Villa I Tatti and the Euro- pean University Institute). A grant from the Australian Academy of the Humanities International Science Linkages Humanities and Creative Arts Programme (ISL-HCA) allowed Giorgio to spend time in Australia to develop this book. This project was further developed in conversation with colleagues at the EUI in Fiesole and at the University of Padua. Many people must be thanked. First, we thank our colleagues and friends who endured us writing another book simultaneously with other projects and even a new job for Peter at Aalto University, Helsinki, and a new position at Warwick for Giorgio. We wish to mention in particular Simon Lee and Richard Butler. Our colleagues Maxine Berg, Anne Gerrit- sen, and Giovanni Luigi Fontana did much to support, inspire, and critique this project. The next round of thanks must go to our indefatigable and always cheerful friends and occasional assistants Masafumi Monden in Sydney and Clare Tang in London, and to the very erudite and worldly Virginia Wright, who took a strong web-based pencil to our text. To all of you, we are very grateful. We thank the anonymous readers who com- mented on our proposal and Matthew Cotton, our editor at Oxford Uni- versity Press, for his patience, surely a great luxury. Special thanks must go to Kevin L. Jones, FIDM Museum Curator, and Christina Johnson, FIDM Museum Associate Curator. They kindly showed us part of the wonderful FIDM Museum collection and arranged for its special photography. Our thanks also to Justin Hobson, Country Life Pic- ture Library; Kristen McDonald, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University; Matthew Martin and Jenny Moloney, National Gallery of Victoria; Sanda Miller; Elizabeth Fischer, Director of Jewelry Design, Haute École de Design, Geneva; Adelheid Rasche and Hildegard Ringena, Lipperheidesche viii OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/16, SPi preface and acknowledgements Kostümbibliothek Berlin; Martin Kamer, Zug; Maurizio Marinelli; Caro- lyn Cartier; Ilaria Vanni; Mingming Cheng; Desley Luscombe, and Amy Evans for their help. Concetta Laciaux of LuxAdvisory, and Lifen Zhang, Editor-in-Chief, FTChinese.com, provided much needed help with the understanding of contemporary luxury. Titi Halle, Michelle Majer, and Billy de Gregorio continue to support our projects through their advice at Titi Halle/Cora Ginsburg New York. Lillian Williams (Paris and Aix- en-Provence) was very hospitable in showing Peter a part of her private collection of eighteenth-century artefacts. Finally, we also thank the staff of the Abegg-Stiftung, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and our other museum friends around the world. We thank photographer and fashion theorist Alexander Su for sharing his photograph of a pawnshop in Sydney, and our picture researcher, Fo Orbell. Shalen Singh helped greatly in the final stages of the typescript, and Simon Lee read the sections on the great brands. Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello Christmas 2015 ix
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