Luxury progress, luxury product

These pages present a luxury product that managed to hold a strong position on the international market over a long period. We have gone into the reasons for this success, closely analysing both the manufacturing process and the markets for which it was destined. Conscious though we are of the difficulty of arriving at a general definition of luxury, we nonetheless feel that comparative analysis of this and various such cases may help define a paradigm. The picture that emerges makes it clear how important, and how complex, it is to reconstruct objects by their symbolic value and patterns of use. No doubt not all articles possess the same semantic breadth or have source material available to the researcher – which makes the case in point an interesting yardstick for comparison. The object under analysis is Bolognese silk voile. Though the lightest of fabrics with a straightforward weave, it is a hard manufacturing feat to bring off owing to the delicacy and fragility of the material. For many centuries the product held its own against overseas competition, only to fade out in the course of the nineteenth century and be expunged from social memory. Even at the end of the eighteenth century when the final crisis is already looming, the French competitors themselves continue to acknowledge the superiority of Bologna voile. Although by this time the Bolognesi are losing ground, the Lyons silk workers go one using the trick of counterfeiting the sender name on their voile consignments. They choose the names of the best-known Bologna merchants in order to enhance the prestige of their own product.