Little Luxuries

Luxury goods are usually ones that are rare, exotic and expensive. People are buying more and more luxury goods worldwide, but was luxury in the past the same as now? And who will buy luxury goods in the future?

In ancient Greece the typical diet was fruit and cereals. For most people meat was a luxury and they could only eat it at religious celebrations, where it was a gift for the Gods. Fish was also a luxury and everyone knew the price of different types, so people could show how rich they were by the type of fish they bought. In 5th century Greece, eating a lot of fish or expensive fish meant that a person couldn’t control their desires. Athenians believed if you were out of control in one way, you were out of control in every way, so ‘fish lover’ became an insult.

In 17th century Holland, tulips became the most important luxury. At that time, most flowers were not very colourful, but tulips were. One particular tulip, ‘Semper Augustus’, was extremely beautiful and colourful. One tulip-lover in Amsterdam offered 3,000 guilders for one tulip bulb, which was about the yearly income of a rich merchant and about twice the money Rembrandt received for one of his paintings. The price of a tulip bulb went up and up and in 1633, someone sold a farmhouse for three rare tulip bulbs!

After World War Two in Europe, the middle classes wanted luxury goods, but they couldn’t afford large items, so smaller things like handbags, scarves, wallets and purses became luxury items and this is still true. For example, 90% of women in Japan have a designer handbag.

The luxury goods market is growing and is expected to be about £164 billion by the end of 2011. Now Chinese people buy 12% of luxury goods worldwide and some economists say that in 2020 they will probably buy 44% of all luxury goods, which means they will buy more luxury products then than the whole world buys now.