Unwritten: The Implicit Luxury
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that are willing to look for it. The new concept of luxury, as with the way luxury was
understood in the past, has the characteristic of being available just for the few.
Beyond this, what we cannot avoid in order to make this new luxury something
attainable for more people is the need to recognise the immense connection that
people in the past had with universal matters. These ancestral communities understood nature and the human body in a way that we are not capable of anymore.
Now, the concept of luxury has changed, moving beyond the mere acquisition of
goods and towards holistic experiences, via means that are responsible, sustainable,
knowledgeable, and connected more with our internal needs.
There are three main aspects in luxury nowadays:
• Elevation to luxury status through time-invested craftsmanship
• Self-exploration about human needs in a world more focused on sustainability
• Personal experiences transformed into luxuries.
Craftsmanship is one of the key points in the new concept of luxury. As Joseph Beuys
did with felt, craftspeople are doing with almost any material nowadays. All those
forgotten old items or everyday materials are the main resources for craftsmanship,
provided they are in the hands of experts in working with those materials. Old items
and natural materials already hold a story, telling us something about the past, about
where they came from. Innovators use these objects and materials as a blank canvas,
putting body and mind to work together to give them a contemporary purpose or
meaning. They also believe that a small number of crafted objects are more precious
than many mass-produced ones. In craft it is not just the final result that matters, but
the making process in and of itself that transforms the object into a “luxury”.
This gives materials broader possibilities in the hands of craftspeople. As the
documentary “The Future is Handmade” advocates, if we consciously access this
new knowledge structure built by environmental, social, and cultural awareness, it
can generate the same sense of belonging that ancestral techniques offered to their
societies in a world that is increasingly making a lot of us placeless. That is one of the
most interesting aspects of the new concept of luxury. The memories that materials
and experiences leave in our bodies are things that cannot be removed from us. An
expensive item can just be stolen, but knowledge and experiences have the value that
cannot be lost or taken.
If craftsmanship is one of the keys to luxury, knowledge is the key to craftsmanship. It requires mastery of technique, and mastering a technique requires both time
and a desire to fight back against a society that demands instant solutions to problems and instant gratification for desires. This is the space that craftsmanship gives,
a place where we familiarise ourselves with techniques, materials, stories, where
it is possible to consider knowledge as something that can be engaged by all the
senses and where the only thing that matters is to be able to perform a task beautiful
and consciously. This act is what produces the effect of being present in the world,
offering well-being through this feeling of being connected.
Craftsmanship is one of the strongest challenges to capitalism, which used to be the
main driver of the old concept of luxury. Those who could afford these goods would
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that are willing to look for it. The new concept of luxury, as with the way luxury was
understood in the past, has the characteristic of being available just for the few.
Beyond this, what we cannot avoid in order to make this new luxury something
attainable for more people is the need to recognise the immense connection that
people in the past had with universal matters. These ancestral communities understood nature and the human body in a way that we are not capable of anymore.
Now, the concept of luxury has changed, moving beyond the mere acquisition of
goods and towards holistic experiences, via means that are responsible, sustainable,
knowledgeable, and connected more with our internal needs.
There are three main aspects in luxury nowadays:
• Elevation to luxury status through time-invested craftsmanship
• Self-exploration about human needs in a world more focused on sustainability
• Personal experiences transformed into luxuries.
Craftsmanship is one of the key points in the new concept of luxury. As Joseph Beuys
did with felt, craftspeople are doing with almost any material nowadays. All those
forgotten old items or everyday materials are the main resources for craftsmanship,
provided they are in the hands of experts in working with those materials. Old items
and natural materials already hold a story, telling us something about the past, about
where they came from. Innovators use these objects and materials as a blank canvas,
putting body and mind to work together to give them a contemporary purpose or
meaning. They also believe that a small number of crafted objects are more precious
than many mass-produced ones. In craft it is not just the final result that matters, but
the making process in and of itself that transforms the object into a “luxury”.
This gives materials broader possibilities in the hands of craftspeople. As the
documentary “The Future is Handmade” advocates, if we consciously access this
new knowledge structure built by environmental, social, and cultural awareness, it
can generate the same sense of belonging that ancestral techniques offered to their
societies in a world that is increasingly making a lot of us placeless. That is one of the
most interesting aspects of the new concept of luxury. The memories that materials
and experiences leave in our bodies are things that cannot be removed from us. An
expensive item can just be stolen, but knowledge and experiences have the value that
cannot be lost or taken.
If craftsmanship is one of the keys to luxury, knowledge is the key to craftsmanship. It requires mastery of technique, and mastering a technique requires both time
and a desire to fight back against a society that demands instant solutions to problems and instant gratification for desires. This is the space that craftsmanship gives,
a place where we familiarise ourselves with techniques, materials, stories, where
it is possible to consider knowledge as something that can be engaged by all the
senses and where the only thing that matters is to be able to perform a task beautiful
and consciously. This act is what produces the effect of being present in the world,
offering well-being through this feeling of being connected.
Craftsmanship is one of the strongest challenges to capitalism, which used to be the
main driver of the old concept of luxury. Those who could afford these goods would