The Aura of Luxury: Cultivating the Believing Faithful from the Age of Saints to the Age of Luxury Brands

Abstract

This article seeks to establish a direct relationship between objects of holy veneration in the past, and the modern-day veneration of luxury brands. It positions itself within the work of Walter Benjamin and the “aura” of cult objects articulated in his seminal essay, The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction. This positioning is not coincidental, but has been driven in part by the use of Benjamin’s arguments at the highest level by lawyers representing luxury brands at the European Court of Justice. Central to the argument of this article are notions of veneration, identification, replicability, and, especially, aura. These same notions have now entered into the legal lexicon of..