Jewellery Between Product and Experience: Luxury in the Twenty-First Century

In the contemporary scene, identifying a common and shared definition of what luxury means is ever more difficult and daring. The concept of luxury has changed over time. For centuries, luxury was intended as a sum of beauty and high quality pursued by hand-work and linked to physical products. The digital revolution and the widespread of Information and Communication Technologies has had a significant impact on the global productive system, marking a transition from an ‘analogue’ era to a digital one—and now ‘post-digital’. The paper focuses its investigation in particular on the relationship among jewellery, luxury and sustainability. Firstly, the contribution analyses the concept of luxury and shows how this is increasingly linked to intangible values, where the preciousness of materials has shifted to the preciousness of values. Intangible, far from the needs but close to the desires and dreams of each individual, luxury is seen as the ability to translate the essence of one’s time into a product. The examination then focuses on the jewellery field, as one of the most important luxury goods due to its inherent uniqueness and exclusiveness. The entire essay starts from the assumption that giving a univocal definition of jewellery is impossible because of its value and meaning change according to the contexts. Jewellery, as well as luxury, is highly defined by the temporal variable and by the contexts. Today materials are no longer the only characterizing element to define if a jewellery item belongs to the sphere of luxury. Materials and techniques are instead design choices, useful to tell a story. For this reason, the paper takes into consideration examples of high-end jewellery as well as independent brands and designers who use non-traditional materials for their production. The paper identifies as one of the most important value able to represent the contemporaneity the need of awareness. Luxury should tell about excellence, and luxury products stained by the burden of the environmental or social burden cannot be considered as exclusive or desirable. Environmental and social awareness cannot but be part of the production and distribution strategies of companies in the sector. The essay analyses through case studies the different ways for the jewellery sector to promote a sustainable practice. In detail, the first significant grafts for a sustainable supply chain are taken into consideration, respecting tradition and the genius loci, the environment and people. Subsequently, the opportunities and risks of progress and technological and digital innovation for the competitiveness of companies in both production processes and lastly communication tools are explored.