Low Luxury: When "Low" Surpasses "High"
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Luxury’s apex labels—haute couture, haute joaillerie (high jewelry), fine jewelry—do not neutrally describe quality. They manufacture hierarchy by binding value to elevation words before any material inspection takes place. I propose Low Luxury as a categorical inversion: a designation reserved for work that exceeds the highest operative standards of a luxury field while refusing elevation semantics (haute, high, fine) in its name. The flagship is Low Couture, not only because haute couture is culturally central, but because the post-war legal codification of couture renders its superiority finite, enumerable, and therefore outflankable point-by-point. Low Jewelry extends the move into the discursive (non-statutory) domain of haute joaillerie. This is not parody, satire, nor “anti-”; it is categorical supersession of “high” on “high’s” own terms.
Author: Sereno Domínguez, Sabbloyek
Language: English
Subfield: Museology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7083176624
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