Arts & Culture
Luxury rip-off
Published 27 March 2000
Design - Hugh Aldersey-Williams is suspicious when he finds too much of a good thing
"Luxury!" spits Graham Chapman when Michael Palin tells him his family used to live "in't paper bag" in the Monty Python sketch on the inverted snobbery of Yorkshiremen. (Chapman grew up "in't hole in't road", so far as I recall.) The idea of luxury begins with property. No hotel is good enough unless it is a luxury hotel. To sell a vacation home, call it a luxury vacation home. We spend so much time in our cars these days that they count as luxury properties, too, or at least the word is invoked when a brand name such as Mercedes isn't there to do the job. But now the epithet extends to all manner of consumer goods.
It is easy to imagine that luxury might have had its origins in the late 1950s, when austerity gave way to plenty. This may indeed be when the word began to appear in the branding of foods. But the history of the idea in Britain has its roots in the mercantilism and expansion of the middle class in the 18th century, which transformed the meaning of the word from sinfulness to licit self-indulgence - "from an essential, general element of moral theory to a minor, technical element of economic theory", according to John Sekora's Luxury: the concept in western thought, Eden to Smollett (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).
Luxury was bound to have a distinctive meaning at the heart of a Protestant imperial power. Our luxury items - coffee and spices, silk and cotton - are obtained at considerable cost (to others) and are to be enjoyed only with some residual guilt. In an earlier career, Salman Rushdie peeled away the layers of tittering English ambivalence to sensual pleasure with forensic accuracy before reassembling them with memorable concision in the copy line, "Naughty, but nice".
Marks and Spencer now reinforces its position in the market as a cut above the average food retailer with an abundance of "luxury" lines. Designers have reason to love "luxury", as was explained to me by Guy Douglass of FLB, a branding and packaging design agency based in Cheltenham. "You can really make the word look nice. The ascender of the 'l' is balanced by the descender of the 'y', pivoted round the central 'x'. It's much easier to make it look nice than 'sumptuous'."
On one level, "luxury" is a synonym for "premium" or "superior" - other Latinate emblazonments of poshness. As if to confirm this correlation between higher quality and foreign words, M&S has a range of products even more luxurious than "luxury", which it labels "connoisseur" (a connoisseur being one who exercises discrimination in his consumption of luxuries). But "luxury" has an orotundity - not lost on the Pythons - whereas "prestige", "premium" and "superior" now sound mealy-mouthed through overuse. "Premium" has begun to be used for things like dog food. Eventually, "luxury" may begin to pall. New words will be needed.
Luxury is not simply an indicator of superiority, however. It has a secondary connotation of comfort, appropriate in its original commercial context of describing property, but now deemed fitting for any goods that come into bodily contact. The idea of luxury motor oil or luxury computer software is meaningless. It is also an anomaly to conceive of a luxury dog food, unless, perhaps, it is hand-prepared to a chef's recipe that you would be prepared to eat yourself. But soap, caviar and lingerie may be luxuries. It is no coincidence that the French dominate the luxury goods market. Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the luggage-to-champagne conglomerate, calls itself "the world's leading luxury products group".
The indulgence of luxury offers a more private pleasure than conspicuous consumption. A luxury product does not give you more of something, it gives you more than you have a right to expect, whether it's a thicker chocolate coating, more fruit, more alcohol, more supple leather or a higher percentage of cashmere wool. Hence, there are no luxury diet products. Neither must any preparation be required by the consumer: labour is no part of luxury.
But this is not the whole story. We also have luxury muesli, luxury toilet tissue, even advertisements promising luxury camping holidays. Here, "luxury" is no longer a promise of pleasure. The word has subtly metamorphosed in meaning again. Today's luxury is more precisely an assurance of reduced discomfort. What better evidence of the true meaning of luxury than the existing classification of tampons as luxuries for the purposes of levying VAT?
Luxury has long been a quality of interest to economists, who measure the health of the consumer society in part by its propensity for luxury goods. From Adam Smith to J K Galbraith, they have observed and welcomed the graduation of luxuries into necessities.
Now, the Chancellor Gordon Brown could have followed in their footsteps by announcing in his Budget that tampons are no longer luxuries. Meanwhile, the boffins in new product development offer the Treasury lists of new things to tax with every humdrum item that they choose to upgrade to luxury status.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
