The need of luxury

ENAR

In life and in luxury, everything is a matter of definition. Take the Chinese luxury market. While the core capitalist markets of North America and Europe have been the centers of conspicuous consumption in the past few years, Chinese shoppers in the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan constitute the main new demand engine for luxury. It is a priceless irony of our time that the Chinese, whose country is constitutionally defined as a “socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class”, in 2012 spent $35.9 billion on largely European-branded luxury goods. Luxury has been around for as long as mankind. From every epoch, we find a heritage of items made from the most precious contemporarily available materials, with the best possible quality and artisanship. These items were often void of practical use or luxuriously crafted for purposes of representation or ritual.  Of course, what represents