1: Luxury, Antiquity, and the Antique
2: The Courts, the Church, and Medieval and Renaissance Luxury
3: Luxury and the Orient
4: Housing Luxury: From the Hotel Particulier to the Penthouse
5: Luxury and the Fashionable Body
6: Jet Set Life: From Trans-Atlantic to Global Elites
7: The Chic of Poverty: The Minimalism of Luxury
8: Everything that Money Can Buy? Manipulating Luxury
9: Has Luxury Lost its Lustre?
Further Reading
Notes
Index
Peter McNeil is Professor of Design History at the University of
Technology Sydney and Professor of Fashion Studies at Stockholm
University. Trained as an art and design historian, he works mainly
on eighteenth-century western Europe and on twentieth century
Anglo-American topics ranging from fashion to the politics of the
domestic interior.
Giorgio Riello is the author and editor of several books on the
history of fashion, dress, and textiles including the best-selling
edited collection Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers (in
collaboration with Peter McNeil) and Cotton: The Fabric that Made
the Modern World (2013). He is currently Professor of Global
History and Culture at the University of Warwick.
`There's a tension at the core of the very idea of luxury, and that
tension gives this book its sinew.'
The Wall Street Journal
`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
`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 luxury 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 indispensible 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 material 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
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