What Is Luxury?: Curating Connections between the Hand-crafted and Global Industry

Abstract

This article presents research undertaken by one of the co-curators of What Is Luxury?, an exhibition taking place at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from April 25 to September 27, 2015. The exhibition, which has been organized with the Crafts Council, interrogates general ideas about luxury, its production and future. It scrutinizes relationships of luxury to context, conventions, and change predominantly through the work of contemporary designers, makers, and artists. This article provides an account of the historical context which informs the exhibition's approach to the subject, including the global growth of the luxury goods sector, the pervasiveness of branded content, and the distorting impact of its messaging, through which a fundamental relationship between luxury and craft is promoted. It will also indicate how the exhibition positions itself in relation to this context in order to investigate the complex interface between craft skills and industrialized global economies, and explore some of the moral and ethical implications for the industry as well as independent makers and consumers.

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