John Adams and Thomas Jefferson corresponded for 13 years before they died on the same day. They asked, "How can one have prosperity without commerce? How can one have commerce without luxury? How can one have luxury without corruption? How can you have corruption without the end of the Republic?" And they really didn't know the answer.
No logo, and you don't advertise for anyone. I don't believe in imposed luxury. I believe in built luxury. Something you refine with your own taste. Mass luxury is not my luxury.
You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.
Most brands that are called luxury brands today are not true luxury brands. The globalization of fashion and luxury means you now find the same luxury brands in every city. The stores look the same, the products are the same. It is still a very good quality product but it is now readily available to everyone. It's a kind of mass luxury.
Luxury is obviously the direction that interests me the most, but there is a lot of confusion between luxury and exhibitionism. For me, the concept of luxury is more traditional, more exclusive, more sophisticated than luxury for the masses.
People buy their necessities in shops and have to pay dearly for them because they have to assist in paying for what is also on sale there but only rarely finds purchasers: the luxury and amusement goods. So it is that luxury continually imposes a tax on the simple people who have to do without it.
Craft takes time, and therefore it is luxury. You cannot do an amazingly well-made garment without taking time—not just the time it takes to make something but also the time it took the maker to come up with the idea. That is all luxury, and that has been lost because were trying to make things faster and faster, cheaper and cheaper. The consumer tends to lose track of what luxury is.
It is a luxury to learn; but the luxury of learning is not to be compared with the luxury of teaching.
It is solely bigness in business which makes it possible to supply the masses with all those products the present-day American common man does not want to do without. Luxury goods for the few can be produced in small shops. Luxury goods for the many require big business.
I am not trying to say that I am poor and that I don't like beautiful things. But I don't like luxury for luxury sake or in the sense of showing off luxury.
Doubt remains a luxury I won't do without.
Let me be surrounded by luxury, I can do without the necessities!
God, bless me with luxury. Necessities I can do without.
A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.
Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art.
Luxury goods are the only area in which it is possible to make luxury margins.