Piazza Progettazione e Design by MATERIOTECA

Luxury, the mirror of times

“Luxus” was understood by the Latins as excess, superabundance, anything that is not necessary to meet people’s common needs. And, in our times what does it mean?

Beauty, design, sophistication, elegance or flashiness, pomp and haughtiness? For a few, but desired by many?

The current trend in luxury is to be “low profile”, inconspicuous, a whispered luxury, more democratic because unnecessary goods have become affordable to an increasing number of people.

Whatever anyone’s definition of it, it is a fact that it has become a powerful factor in industrial progress and economic development, as it requires increasingly innovative technologies needed to detach from competition and prevent imitation.

Sole24ore, citing Deloitte’s Global powers of luxury goods 2017 study, writes that in luxury 26 of the top one hundred global players are Italian: the big foreign brands have maintained the manufacturing headquarters of the companies purchased in Italy, they produce all their high-end in our country and, in addition, many brands without production activities in our country have moved their style offices here.

The Deloitte study shows that of the top one hundred global luxury companies, more than a quarter (twenty-six) are Italian. A well-known peculiarity of the luxury market is that it is countercyclical, that is, it continues to develop even in periods when the economy is stagnant or recessionary.

Thus, we are the country where the global luxury ideation is concentrated, where a good part of world production takes place, and where the growth of the sector does not stop. And regardless of how luxury is considered (unnecessary glitz or refined elegance) luxury has become a “must” in the Italian economy.

Materioteca® proposes to conduct a survey among Italian manufacturers of luxury materials and host some of them in the Mecspe 2024 booth.