Critical Luxury Studies

Assembling the foremost scholars in this innovative, distinctive and expanding subject, internationally well-known critical theorists John Armitage and Joanne Roberts present a ground-breaking aesthetic, design-led and media-related examination of the relations between historical and, crucially, contemporary ideas of luxury. Critical Luxury Studies offers a technoculturally inspired survey of the mediated arts and design, as well as a means of comprehending the socio-economic order with novel philosophical tools and critical methods of interrogation that are re-defining the concept of luxury in the 21st century.

A dynamic new contribution to the study of luxury in the Canadian context. From the history of the fur trade to the latest Indigenous fashion movement, from the T. Eaton Company's 1920s "Made-in-Canada" campaign to the on-again-off-again Toronto Fashion Week, from Vancouver public art commissions to Montréal's future-forward fashion tech sector, the essays in this volume explain what makes and breaks Canadian luxury. The book announces a new collective of thinkers who focus on Indigenous and Canadian instances of luxurious production, experiences, and sites to propose a new definition of luxury that includes a plurality of regional practices. Challenging Western perceptions that bind luxury to a colonial past or a consumerist present, these original case studies redefine luxury for Canada, highlighting the notion that Canadian luxury is centered on community and connection.

Luxury; Canadian fashion; Montreal; Indigenous; production; fashion; history; colonialism; canada; luxury studies; community; consumption.

This innovative volume brings together contributions from leading experts in the study of luxury to present the full range of perspectives on luxury business, from a variety of social science approaches. Topics include conceptual foundations and the evolution of the luxury industry; the production of luxury goods; luxury branding and marketing; distributing luxury; globalization and markets; and issues of morality, inequality, and environmental sustainability. The Oxford Handbook of Luxury Business is a necessary resource for all students and researchers of the field as well as for forward-thinking industry professionals.

Bringing together critical race, queer and decolonial analytical approaches, visual analysis, and multimodal discourse analysis, this book explores the discursive strategies deployed by African luxury brands in an age of cross-platform, intertextual branding. Building on literature examining the aesthetics and politics of African luxury, this book demonstrates how leading African luxury brands create visual material speaking to complex sensibilities of culture, nature, and future. Iqani shows how powerful brand narratives and strategies reveal ethical and ideological messages that function to re-position Africa in an increasingly congested global marketplace of ideas. In acknowledging that there is a strong political validity to recognizing the importance of African brands staking their claim in luxury, this book also problematizes the role these brands play in the promotion of luxury discourses, advancing the project of capitalism and their contribution to broader patterns of inequality. Shedding new light not only on luxury branding strategies but also on the idea of a luxurious global “Africanicity” and on the complex cultural politics of South Africa, African Luxury Branding will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in disciplines, including Critical Advertising Studies, African Studies, Media and Communications.

Unique and timely, this Research Handbook on Luxury Branding explores and takes stock of the current body of knowledge on luxury branding, as well as offering direction for future research and management in the field. Featuring contributions from an international team of top-level researchers, this Handbook offers analysis and discussion of the profound socioeconomic, psychological, technological and political changes that are affecting the luxury industry, and that will continue to shape its future.

This professional book introduces marketing and luxury brand professionals to a new definition of luxury and the art of designing the ultimate luxury experience in both the physical space (e.g., in-store, hotel, restaurant) and the digital space (e.g., social media, website, e-commerce). Specifically, it offers an overview of customer experience issues and explores big five experiential strategies that can be applied by luxury houses in order to provide the best luxury experience to their customers. Themes such as quality of customer luxury experience, immersion and co-production/co-creation in luxury, creation and management, digital and immersive marketing, and innovative market research are also examined. How do consumers define luxury? Is there one luxury or several “luxuries”? What kind of luxury experiences consumers want to live? How can luxury houses design the ultimate luxury experience? More than in any other sector, luxury consumption is a response to a search for emotions, pleasure, uniqueness, consideration and greatest services. The luxury consumer wants to live luxury experiences – not just buy luxury products or services. In this way, this book presents the luxury consumption experience as a combination of symbolic meaning, subconscious processes and nonverbal cues and characterized by fantasies, feelings and fun. Featuring case studies and interviews from international luxury sectors and brand managers such as Burberry, Dior, Porsche, Breitling, St. Regis Hotels & Resorts, and Louis Vuitton, among others, this book offers both a research and management perspective on luxury experience to professionals in the luxury sector (e.g., CEOs, brand managers, marketing and communication professionals), as well as marketing professors, students, and people eager to learn more about how to design the ultimate luxury experience. Praise for The New Luxury Experience “This book provides a holistic perspective on marketing of luxury brands, offering both useful practical advice as well as illustrating important cases.” -- Ravi Dhar, Director, Yale Center for Customer Insights, Yale University “Wided Batat’s book offers a fresh, insightful and comprehensive analysis of the concept of the consumer’s experience with luxury whatever that may be. The Five experiential luxury strategies proposed by Wided highlight that luxury management should go above and beyond the design and branding of luxury goods and services. I also commend the consideration given to the younger generations’ approach to luxury and to corporate social responsibility aspects. Luxury marketers should find this book very useful indeed.” -- Francesca Dall’Olmo Riley, Professor of Brand Management, Kingston Business School, UK

In a world that is obsessed with luxury, critical luxury studies is a rapidly emerging field. This is the first book to explore the interplay between the real and imaginary realms of luxury, considering the most significant developments in the theories and practices of luxurious places and spaces over the last fifty years. Providing a critical approach to contemporary interpretations of luxury, the book interrogates the distinction between real places and imaginary spaces. Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars, it features a range of case studies which take the reader from the Rolls-Royce Ghost Black Badge to expressions of sensuality in the 1970s domestic interior, and global conceptions of fine wine and art. The Third Realm of Luxury considers the interplay between luxury and space in both the past and the present, examining the abstract conception of excess and exoticism, as well as the real locations of the home, hotel, apartment, and palace. Full of original research, it is a key contribution to the study of consumption, design, fashion, and architecture.