Luxury: Consumption, legislation, regulation: Part I: Legislation1

Abstract

Historically the most salient and recurrent context of luxury legislation is the imposition of sumptuary laws. This contextual salience and recurrence is no incidental feature but is embedded in human cultural life, understood as (historically manifest) ways of living, in which luxury consumption, alongside the need to control it, are an inextricable component. The focus is on European legislation from the Romans up to the eighteenth century and charts its evanescence as luxury became de-moralized. Despite contextual differences the laws exhibit three common dimensions, namely, moral, political and economic and this trio establish a motif that runs through the discussion.