Today, forms of luxury consumption are increasingly about experience and less about acquiring and owning objects. These « pure » experiences in as much as accessing the experience itself counts more than the possession of the object are becoming more common. So luxury resides in the experience of distinction, enjoyment, spending and excess – in the experience promised by objects rather than the objects themselves. We will examine the modalities of this « experientialisation » and the reasons behind it.

Yves Michaud is a philosopher who has taught at the universities of Clermont-Ferrand, Montpellier, Rouen, Berkeley, Edinburgh, Tunis and Sao Paulo then at Paris 1 from 1985 onwards. He is also an art critic and was Director of the École nationale des Beaux Arts from 1989 to 1996. He is the founder and organiser of the Université de tous les savoirs that has been going since 1998. He has published Ibiza mon amour. Enquête sur l'industrialisation du plaisir (NIL, 2012), L'art à l'état gazeux. Essai sur le triomphe de l'esthétique (Hachette littératures, coll. Pluriel, 2004). 2013 will see the publication of Le luxe fragile. Essai sur l'arrogance et l'authenticité (Stock, 2013).

The role of the artistic professions in luxury, a conference given by Marc de Ferrière le Vayer, Lecturer at Université François-Rabelais de Tours and President of the IEHCA (Institut Européen d'Histoire et des Cultures de l'Alimentation).

An artistic profession can not survive by ignoring technique, and the art professions that have thrived are those who have developed with innovation. This leads to the paradox of presenting the art professions as a part of « heritage that must be preserved ».

The highlighting of art professions in luxury does not solve a series of paradoxes. Luxury does not have a monopoly on quality, or on the beautiful for that matter: a good ships carpenter does not work in luxury but nevertheless does work that is exceptional and unique. Paper machines do not all make the same paper: where is the « hand » in that case?

In the 19th century, rarity was not synonymous with value. Hand made objects only came to be prized from the mid 20th century onwards with the taste for the « one-off piece ».

Today, the legitimacy of a luxury company relies on its age and the valorisation of hand made products, as if the technical and industrial aspects were being pushed into the background. According to Marc de Ferrière le Vayer, one can produce industrially without affecting quality levels and continue to « industrialise systems » just as we have been since the beginning of the 19th century.

A historical exploration of dandyism, this « self-aestheticisation » through which an individual tends to make a living work of art out of their own existence. Through the great figures of the genre since George Brummell, the aim is to outline the contours and issues of a style whose relationship to fashion has always been complex: « Injecting a little dandyism, through fashion, to all of contemporary clothing meant the inevitable death of dandyism itself, as, in essence, it was condemned to be radical, or not be at all" (Roland Barthes, 1962).

Farid Chenoune, fashion historian and author of a number of works including Des modes et des hommes, deux siècles d'élégance masculine (Flammarion, 1993), is also a lecturer at the IFM.

 The history of department stores is most often associated with relatively schematic visions. An early trend involved comparing the archaic nature of the little store to the modernity of the department store. This approach comes under attack from history itself as it shows that the main innovations in the trade revolution were instigated by novelty stores in the first half of the 19th century. In addition, it is common to mistakenly associate department stores with the Second Empire. In this traditional chronology, as it was founded in 1894, the Galeries Lafayette is the exception. How can we explain its booming success if not through its close links to fashion? Writing the history of the Galeries Lafayette also means revisiting the relationships between the players of the fashion system, and most notably between the department stores and couture.

Florence Brachet Champsaur set up the « Patrimoine & archives historiques » in the Galeries Lafayette group, where she is also in charge of sponsoring and patronage. She is a business and fashion historian (EHESS, IHTP-CNRS), and has published a number of articles including « De l'odalisque de Poiret à la femme nouvelle de Chanel: une victoire de la femme ? » (in 1914-1918 Combats de femmes, Editions Autrement, 2004) and « Un grand magasin à la pointe de la mode: les Galeries Lafayette » (in La mode des sixties. L'entrée dans la modernité, Editions Autrement, 2007).

The emergence of Japanese designers on the Parisian scene from the end of the sixties led to upheaval in the fashion landscape in the long term with successive generations of designers and brands from since the middle of the sixties. In order to develop, without having the prestigious notoriety of Parisian couturiers or the commercial power of the big textile companies, each brand carved out its own place using a brand strategy based on the conviction of the designer: no wholesalers, a network of passionate fashion lovers, brand image controlled down to the last detail... These methods are now used throughout the world. But today's young Japanese fashion designers have neither the interest in nor the training for haute couture and spend less time in Paris than two decades ago. « Japanese designers like Kenzo Takada and Issey Miyake imitated western fashion before moving to Paris. They started taking their inspiration from Japan once they arrived in France in the middle of the sixties », explains Kaya Tsujita, a doctor of History and academic at the EHESS, in this conference on « the invention of Japanese fashion in Paris ».

Kaya Tsujita has a PhD in History from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and now works as a consultant in fashion, luxury, textiles and consumption. She has published articles including « L'avènement de la mode et la naissance de la mode japonaise (The emergence of fashion and the birth of Japanese fashion) » (in Esthétiques du quotidien au Japon, Institut Français de la Mode/Regard, 2010) and « Copier, imiter et inspirer: Les années françaises au Japon » (in La mode des sixties. L'entrée dans la modernité, Editions Autrement, 2007).