Shaun Borstrock: Visualising Luxury
A large percentage of fashion companies rely on a historical notion of luxury to add value to their brands and this is crucial where marketing various products is concerned. The designer places emphasis on the historical significance of luxury through reference to the history of their brand, or the history of others. History has played a role in creating and maintaining the intrinsic value of the concept in relation to the contemporary lifestyle market. However, the consumer is now being manipulated by designers, and celebrities (via contemporary marketing methods) to understand and accept the concept of luxury in a different way, and the increased presence of luxury branded goods and services is apparent, as companies seek to assert and/or maintain their position in the market.
Historically, consumption of luxury goods during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is well documented, and must be considered when defining the contemporary luxury and luxury brands market. Today, the consumer understands and interprets what they buy through historical appropriation. When it comes to luxury, the marketing of goods is reliant upon the values asserted through historically influenced visual narratives, both visual, and textual, that define, as well as explain the concept. Academia, and the media, portray the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as ones of extravagance; eras where royalty and aristocracy defined the parameters that have subsequently constituted luxury.
It could be argued that this incessant growth of the luxury brands market has had a detrimental effect on the understanding and interpretation of luxury in a contemporary, as well as an historical, context. It is proposed that today the consumer places little or no value on make but places value on the brand or label, something that is communicated visually to an aspirant audience. Historical notions of luxury, designer, consumerism and manufacturing have played a role in establishing the emergence of the new designer luxury market. However, a distinction needs to be made, in order to clarify the emergence of this new market, described as luxury, which requires differentiation in the late twentieth century from what are popularly and historically understood as the designer and luxury goods markets. In this presentation, these concepts of 'luxury' will be considered as both the catalyst, and marketing tool, that through desire, and fashion trends, compels companies to diversify their product range from what could be seen as their traditional product, to products that encompass brand extension through their association with luxury.
Although fashions may have changed, the reliance on historical association and explanation has become a means of defining the luxury branded product. Visual representation, whether in print or on film, often refers to the extravagance and opulence of past centuries, establishing images that have far wider implications than merely enhancing the consumer experience. Such images, both historical and contemporary, will be compared, contrasted, and considered.