From Traditional to Post-modern Value of Luxury

This chapter attempts to define luxury and show how and why its meaning and perception evolved over time. An attempt to define luxury shows what an ambiguous, subjective and changeable concept we are dealing with. In addition to analyzing traditional and emerging features of luxury the history of the development of the luxury goods market is also presented. The description of the successive stages of development of the luxury market as a business and the changing approach to luxury (in terms of the types of goods considered to be luxurious and their availability) reflects a gradual shift from goods available to the few anointed with power to their mass dissemination.