Luxury: A History

A sweeping history of luxury--from the pharaohs to the plutocrats--celebrating the quintessential role of opulence in human evolution

From diamonds to Daimlers, a garden planted with porcelain roses, a mantle sewn with 45,000 feathers, a staircase fashioned of crystal, and tea served in a $36 million cup, here is luxury as pleasure, luxury as splendor, and luxury as beyond. Across fourteen chapters longtime Vogueeditor Jill Spalding chronicles what luxury entailed for such of history's icons as Cleopatra, Charlemagne, Kublai Khan, Montezuma, Elizabeth I, Marie de' Medici, Louis XIV, Shah Jahan, and the Emperor Qianlong. Discover how luxury flourished the table, the arts, travel, and architecture; how luxury drove fashion, marked politics, and advanced religion.

Holding that luxury remains a global pursuit, Spalding links its evolution and impact to modern-day aspiration. How did luxury define the Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, J.P. Morgan, and William Hearst? What has luxury meant to Coco Chanel, Elizabeth Taylor, Valentino, Daphne Guinness, and Leonardo DiCaprio? Find them all in this panoramic new survey. Informative, entertaining, and illustrated with more than 300 iconic archival images, Luxury: A History is a stunning, essential read for history lovers, fashion enthusiasts, art aficionados, and more.

Jill Spalding is a journalist, art critic, radio host, and author of the bestseller Only the Best. Following stints at Éditions Gallimard in Paris and Weidenfeld & Nicolson in London she built a lifelong career at Condé Nast. In 1969, as features editor of British Vogue, Spalding initiated its famous ecology-oriented "Blue Issue," alerting readers to the depletion of wildlife and natural resources. After moving to Los Angeles she wrote a food column for Vogue Entertaining and Travel and interviewed personalities such as Fidel Castro, Nancy Reagan, Hunter Thompson, Carl Sagan, Michael Crichton, Tom Wolfe, and Buckminster Fuller. Under her editorship, Vogue was among the first to publish the work of Frank Gehry, Robert Mapplethorpe, Herb Ritts, and David Hockney.