The idea of luxury has secured a place in contemporary western culture, and the term is now part of common parlance in both established and emerging economies. This book explores the many issues and debates surrounding the idea of luxury.
This new research addresses contentious issues surrounding perceptions of luxury, its relationship to contemporary branding as created by the marketers, and the impact this has on the consumer and their purchasing habits.
Crafting Luxury considers work within the field of luxury and luxury brands, encompassing established companies with a long heritage: from conglomerates and small independents to ‘new’ luxury and emerging models with innovative practices. It examines the industry structures with respect to production, as well as the hierarchies that exist, and the impact these have on both internal and external perceptions of luxury, from the makers to the sellers and consumers alike. Attention is also given to the working structures of the ateliers, production facilities, origin of materials, manufacture and the impact of technology on consumption, the retail environment and sales, all providing a true insider’s view of this complex world.
The authors – a designer of product and jewellery, a brand strategist and a fashion designer, an architect, and a sociologist and specialist in business management – are practitioners and academics. Their approach to dissecting the complex world of luxury brings distinct viewpoints to the debate, offering different perspectives, thoughts and interpretations of luxury.
Crafting Luxury will appeal to academics and educators, industry specialists and anyone interested in luxury as a concept. It will appeal to those in a variety of academic and industry disciplines: art history, history, social sciences and humanities with an interest in luxury, fashion studies, design, business, cultural studies and textiles. It will also be valuable to students and researchers in social sciences, humanities, business, design, branding, consumption, retail, architecture, cultural studies, fashion studies and textiles.
May also appeal to industry practitioners in retail, design, technology, marketing, the supply chain and manufacture, as well as design professions including architecture, fashion and interior design.
Table of Content
Preface: The Hand of the Maker …………………………………………………… vii
1 The Luxury Journey of Discovery …………………………………………… 1
2 The Luxury Domain ………………………………………………………………. 13
3 Contemporary Notions of Luxury ………………………………………….27
4 Craft and Design …………………………………………………… ……..43
5 Cultural Capital, Work and Production ………………………………….67
6 Social Responsibility, Eco-Design and the Circular Economy ……….95
7 Decoding Luxury …………………………………………………. ……. 113
8 Luxury and the Retail Environment ……………………………………143
9 Industry Perspectives and the Future of Luxury …………………….167
10 Final Thoughts ……………………………………………… ………….183
Notes ………………………………………………………………………….189
References ………………………………………………………………….. 191
Index ………………………………………………………………………… 209
About the author
Veronica Manlow is an associate professor in the Business Management Department in Brooklyn College’s Koppelman School of Business. She is the academic director of the Innovation + Entrepreneurship Lab at Brooklyn College where she is working with a variety of community and City University of New York (CUNY) partners to create an internship programme in minority and women-owned businesses for Brooklyn College students interested in becoming entrepreneurs. Along with Shaun Borstrock, Mark Bloomfield and Silvio Carta, she is the author of Crafting Luxury: Craftsmanship, Manufacture, Technology and the Retail Environment (Intellect, 2022) released this summer. She is editor, along with fellow CUNY colleagues Eugenia Paulicelli and Elizabeth Wissinger, of The Routledge Companion to Fashion Studies (Routledge, 2021). Her current research investigates luxury labour performed by artisans in a variety of settings ranging from independent workshops to the factory floors of large conglomerates. She was guest editor of a Special Issue on luxury production in the Journal of Design, Business & Society published in October 2018. She and Shaun Borstrock are editors of this journal and are organizers of the International In Pursuit of Luxury Conference. Her Ph.D. is in sociology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Contact: Brooklyn College, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210, USA.
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