Critical Positioning

Several of you have expressed some concern about how to take on a more specific and sharp position for the thesis. This is understandable considering the focus that we had for much of the semester on the material and analytical exploration of luxury goods. There are a number of strategies available for crafting a more precise position. You can certainly look outward to cultural or architectural issues that are of interest regardless of the issue of Fabricated Luxury, but I would like to suggest that the topic itself can provide a solid platform for taking a critical position, or more specifically, that the definition and use of luxury has to change. Several contemporary issues help to illustrate this.

First, as we have been discussing throughout the semester, Luxury, even when fabricated is not no longer exclusive product of more labor. Contemporary fabrication technologies, rapid prototyping, and mass customization afford the ability to augment the attributes that you have been studying. What does this mean for the thesis? It might mean that luxury or certain luxury behaviors become more broadly available, challenging the previously exclusive status of luxury.
It would follow that new ideas about luxury would have to be formulated. Questioning what that new luxury is, what its characteristics are, and how it can be produced would certainly fall under the category of a critical thesis.

Some Resources on Mass Customization:

http://www.managingchange.com/masscust/overview.htm
http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/08/pf/goodlife/customization/
http://www.core77.com/reactor/mass_customization.html


Second, on a global level there is an economic and cultural shift in the global luxury market. We are seeing rapid growth and the vast accumulation of wealth in nations like China and Russia, regions like Dubai, and even smaller nations like Ireland and Vietnam while nations such as France, Japan, and even the United States are experiencing an economic slowdown and an aging population. A changing luxury market has meant that the most prominent luxury consumers are increasingly coming from outside of the traditional luxury set and increasingly non-Western, especially at the highest end of the market. Again, it follows that luxury intelligence has to be reoriented in order to take advantage of this shift and new ideas of about luxury would have to be formulated. This change is both formal and material, as well as protocol and program-driven.

Some examples:

"Chinese Speak the International Language of Shopping"
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/world/europe/07eurochinese.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

"Market for Luxury Brands Booms in Shanghai"
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-03/13/content_314462.htm

"Middle Class India Plows New Wealth into Big Weddings"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0929/p01s04-wosc.html