Living It Up

Our Love Affair with Luxury

James Twitchell

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9780231500562
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

Economic downturns and terrorist attacks notwithstanding, America's love affair with luxury continues unabated. Over the last several years, luxury spending in the United States has been growing four times faster than overall spending. It has been characterized by political leaders as vital to the health of the American economy as a whole, even as an act of patriotism. Accordingly, indices of consumer confidence and purchasing seem unaffected by recession. This necessary consumption of unnecessary items and services is going on at all but the lowest layers of society: J.C. Penney now offers day spa treatments; Kmart sells cashmere bedspreads. So many products are claiming luxury status today that the credibility of the category itself is strained: for example, the name "pashmina" had to be invented to top mere cashmere.

We see luxury everywhere: in storefronts, advertisements, even in the workings of our imaginations. But what is it? How is it manufactured on the factory floor and in the minds of consumers? Who cares about it and who buys it? And how concerned should we be that luxuries are commanding a larger and larger percentage of both our disposable income and our aspirations?

Trolling the upscale malls of America, making his way toward the Mecca of Las Vegas, James B. Twitchell comes to some remarkable conclusions. The democratization of luxury, he contends, has been the single most important marketing phenomenon of our times. In the pages of Living It Up, Twitchell commits the academic heresy of paying respect to popular luxury consumption as a force that has united the country and the globe in a way that no war, movement, or ideology ever has. What's more, he claims, the shopping experience for Americans today has its roots in the spiritual, the religious, and the transcendent.

Deft and subtle writing, audacious ideas, and a fine sense of humor inform this entertaining and insightful book.

1.

Over the Top

AMERICANS IN THE LAP OF LUXURY

It is only shallow people who do not judge the world by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

If you want to understand material culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century, you must understand the overwhelming importance of unnecessary material. If you are looking for the one unambiguous result of modern capitalism, of the industrial revolution, and of marketing, here it is. In the way we live now, you are not what you make. You are what you consume. And outside of that which is found in a few aisles in the grocery and hardware stores, most of what you consume is totally unnecessary yet remarkably well made.

The most interesting of those superfluous objects belong in a socially constructed and ever-shifting class called luxury. Consuming those objects, objects as rich in meaning as they are low in utility, causes lots of happiness and distress. As well they should. For one can make the argument that until all necessities are had by all members of a community, no one should have luxury. More complex still is that, since the 1980s, the bulk consumers of luxury have not been the wealthy but the middle class, your next-door neighbors and their kids. And this is happening not just in the West but in many parts of the world.

When I was growing up in the middle class of the 1950s, luxury objects were lightly tainted with shame. You had to be a little cautious if you drove a Cadillac, wore a Rolex, or lived in a house with more than two columns out front. The rich could drip with diamonds, but you should stay dry. Movie stars could drive convertibles; you should keep your top up. If you’ve got it, don’t flaunt it. Remember, the people surrounding you had lived through the depression, a time that forever lit the bright line between have-to-have, don’t-need-to-have, and have-in-order-to-show-off.

The best definition of this old-style off-limits luxury came to me from my dad. I was just a kid and it was my first trip to a cafeteria: Morrison’s Cafeteria in Pompano Beach, Florida, February 1955. When I got to the desserts, I removed the main course from my tray and loaded up on cake and Jello. My dad told me to put all the desserts back but one. I said that wasn’t fair. To me the whole idea of cafeteria was to have as much as you want of what you want. My dad said no, that was not the idea of cafeteria. The idea of cafeteria is that you can have just one of many choices.

The New Luxury, the Luxurification of the Commonplace

Look around American culture and you will see how wrong he was. Almost every set of consumables has a dessert at the top. And you can have as much of it as you can get on your plate or as much of it as your credit card will allow. This is true not just for expensive products like town cars and McMansions but for everyday objects. In bottled water, for instance, there is Evian, advertised as if it were a liquor. In coffee, there’s Starbucks; in ice cream, Häagen-Dazs; in sneakers, Nike; in whiskey, Johnnie Walker Blue; in credit cards, American Express Centurian; in wine, Chateau Margaux; in cigars, Arturo Fuente Hemingway; and, well, you know the rest. Having a few TVs around the house is fine, but what you really need is a home entertainment center with a JBL Ultra Synthesis One audio system, a Vidikron Vision One front projector, a Stewart Ultramatte 150 screen, a Pioneer DV-09 DVD player, an AMX ViewPoint remote control.… Hungry for dinner with your entertainment? Wolfgang Puck has his own line of TV dinners … whoops, entrées.

Name the category, no matter how mundane, and you’ll find a premium or, better yet, a super-premium brand at the top. And having more than you can conceivably use of such objects is not met with opprobrium but with genial acceptance. This pattern persists regardless of class: the average number of branded sneakers for adolescent males? 4.8 pairs. And regardless of culture: a favorite consumer product in China? Chanel lipstick dispensers sans lipstick.

What Every American Needs to Know

When I first started thinking about luxury, I took a list from the Robb Report of the “Best of the Best” (June 1999) to my upper-division class on advertising. The Robb Report, a “magazine for the luxury lifestyle,” features “the best the good life has to offer,” from luxury and exotic cars to yachts, high-tech equipment, dining, travel, aircraft, spirits, cigars, fashion, jewelry, art. Just a few minutes between its covers is enough to make even the most die-hard capitalist think that communism is not all that bad a way to distribute goods.

First, I asked my students to identify data from E. D. Hirsch’s best-selling Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—terms like gross national product, Emancipation Proclamation, irony …, listed in the appendix under the rubric “What Literate Americans Know.” Naturally, they were abysmal, functionally illiterate. Then I gave them this list of the “best of the best,” most of which I had never heard of, and asked them to identify. Here’s just a bit of the list:

Men’s wear designer: Armani	Sedan: Mercedes Benz S Class
Suit: Cesare Attolini	Sports car: Porsche 911
Shirt: Luigi Borrelli	Convertible: Ferrari F355 Spider
Tie: E. Marinella	Exotic car: Ferrari 456M GT
Formal wear: Giorgio Armani	Sports utility vehicle: Mercedes Benz
Casual wear: E. Zegna	Performance car: AMG CLK-GTR
Knitwear: Loro Piana	Sportfishing boat: Hines-Farley
Pants: Giorgio Armani	Sailing yacht: Alloy Yacht
Golf wear: Bobby Jones	Light jet: Cessna Citation Excel
Boating wear: Paul & Shark	Midsize jet: Cessna Citation X
Tennis wear: Lacoste	Heavy jet: Dassault Falcon 900EX
Eyewear: Silhouette Optical	Sport bike: Yamaha YZF-R1
Cuff links: Asprey & Garrard	Tour bike: BMW K1200LT Custom
Pen: Omas	Luxury hotel: Peninsula Hong Kong
Women’s wear designer: Galliano	Golf irons: Ping
Evening wear: Oscar de la Renta	Putters: TearDrop
Casual wear: Helmut Lang	Golfwoods: Callaway
Shoes: Chanel	Casino: Caesars Palace
Handbags: Hermès	CD player: Krell KPS 25s
Lingerie: La Perla	Tennis racket: Wilson Carbon
Furs: Karl Lagerfeld for Fendi	Ski resort: Vail
Watchmaking: Patek Philippe	Skis: Volant Ti Power
Jewelry: Harry Winston	Fishing rod: Thomas & Thomas
Kitchen range: Le Chateau 147	Airline: British Air
Dishwasher: Miele 900 Series	Spirit: Macallan Malt Whiskey
Refrigerator: Sub-Zero	Aperitif: Cuvée Dom Perignon 1986
Spa/shower: Jacuzzi J-Allure	Cigar: A. Fuente
Outdoor grill: Lazy Man	Humidor: Elie Bleu
Flat plasma TV: Pioneer	DVD player: Pioneer DV-09
Desktop computer: Sony VAIO	Personal organizer: Palm V
Notebook computer: Toshiba	Cellular phone: Nokia

They know these names! I admit that this sampling is not very sophisticated. These are just college kids. But they are the tail of the tiger. They are relatively confined now but still very potent in the marketplace (about $20 billion a year and access to a whole lot more). What was interesting to me is that so much of their consumption knowledge is anticipatory, and some of it—like knowing the jet planes—is clearly never going to be realized. But don’t tell them this. In a page one story on September 14, 1999, the Wall Street Journal reported that a KPMG International poll of college seniors found that fully 74 percent expect to become millionaires. No matter: They already know what some Americans need to know.

Basil Englis and Michael Solomon, professors of marketing in the School of Business at Rutgers University, were more sophisticated in their research. They wanted to show how tightly college students cluster around this kind of top-brand knowledge. They drew guinea pigs from undergraduate business majors at their institution and presented them with forty cards, each containing a description of different clusters of consumers.

The professors sifted the clusters to make four groups—lifestyles, if you will—representative of undergraduate society. They were Young Suburbia, Money & Brains, Smalltown Downtown, and Middle America. Then Englis and Solomon gathered images of objects from four product categories (automobiles, magazines/newspapers, toiletries, and alcoholic beverages) that fit into each group. The students were asked to put the various images together into coherent groups; they were also to state their current proximity to, or desire to be part of, each group in the future.

Next, they were asked to sort the cards into four piles, or categories, defined as

“These people are very similar to how I would like to be” (aspirational group).

“These people are very similar to how I currently see myself” (occupied group).

“These people are very similar to how I would not like to be” (avoidance group).

“These people have no meaning for me; I don’t feel strongly about wanting to be like or not wanting to be like them” (irrelevant group).

As might be expected the Money & Brains cluster was the most popular aspirational niche. What Englis and Solomon did not expect was how specific and knowledgeable the students were about the possessions that they did not have but knew that members of that cluster needed. When asked what brand of automobile they would drive, here’s what they said: BMWs (53.6 percent), Mercedes (50.7), Cadillacs (30.4), Volvos (23.2), Porsches (21.7), Acuras (17.4), and Jaguars (15.9). They knew what they wanted to read: travel magazines (21.7 percent), Vogue (21.7), BusinessWeek (20.3), Fortune (17.9), and GQ (15.9). Again, this is not what they did read but what they took to be the reading material of the desired group. What they were actually reading (or so they said) were Forbes, Barron’s, the New Yorker, and Gourmet. No mention of Rolling Stone, Playboy, Spin, or Maxim for this group. They certainly knew what to drink: Heineken beer (33.3 percent), expensive wines (26.1), scotch (18.8), champagne (17.4), and Beck’s beer (15). They also knew what to sprinkle on their bodies: Polo (27.5 percent), Obsession (15.9), and Drakkar (15.9).

What the professors found was not just that birds of a feather had started to flock together but that these young birds already knew what flock to shy away from. They were not ashamed of smoking, for instance, but of smoking the wrong brand. Their prime avoidance group corresponded to the Smalltown Downtown cluster. The Money & Brainers knew a lot about the Smalltowners. They knew about favored pickup trucks, Chevys (23.2 percent) and Fords (18.8). They knew that this group reads People (30.4 percent), Sports Illustrated (26.1), TV Guide (24.6), Wrestling (21.7), fishing magazines (20.3), and the National Enquirer (18.8). They assumed that Smalltowners preferred Budweiser (59.4 percent), followed by Miller (24.6) and Coors (18.8). Essentially, the Money & Brainers had learned not just what to buy but what to avoid (or at least what to say to avoid). As chefs say, what is sent back to the kitchen is often more important than what is eaten.

Such shared knowledge, as Professor Hirsch knows well, is the basis of culture. This insight was, after all, the rationale behind a liberal arts education. John Henry Newman and Matthew Arnold argued for state-supported education in the nineteenth century precisely because cultural literacy meant social cohesion. No one argued that it was important to know algebraic functions or Latin etymologies or what constitutes a sonnet because such knowledge allows us to solve important social problems. We learn such matters because it is the basis of how to speak to each other, how we develop a bond of shared history and commonality. This is the secular religion of the liberal arts and sciences, what Pierre Bourdieu calls cultural capital.

In our postmodern world we have, it seems, exchanged knowledge of history and science (a knowledge of production) for knowledge of products and how such products interlock to form coherent social patterns (a knowledge of consumption). Buy this and don’t buy that has replaced make/learn this, don’t make/learn that. After all, in the way we live now, everyone is a consumer, but not everyone is a worker. As Marcel Duchamp, sly observer of the changing scene, said, “Living is more a question of what one spends than what one makes” (quoted in “Thoughts”:160). Thus a new denomination of cultural capital.

A shift in currency has clear ramifications. A producer culture focuses on the independent self of the worker: self-help, self-discipline, self-respect, self-control, self-reliance, self-interest. Responsibility is situated in the individual. Can she get work? A consumer culture, however, focuses on community. Fit in, don’t stand out. Be cool. The standard of judgment becomes the ability to interact effectively with others, to win their affection and admiration—to merge with others of the same lifestyle. Can he consume the right brands?

The Message of Massage

When consumption is triumphant, one witnesses an almost universal sense of ent...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Over the Top
• 2. The Social Construction of Luxury
• 3. Let’s Go Shopping
• 4. Where Opuluxe Is Made and Who Makes It
• 5. How Luxury Becomes Necessity
• 6. From Shirts to Tulips
• 7. Viva Las Vegas!
• 8. Still Learning from Las Vegas
• Conclusion
• Selected Bibliography
• Index