What is luxury today? The new exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris explores the concept through over 100 historical artifacts

After his epic 10,000 Years of Luxury exhibition at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, curator Oliver Gabet returns to investigate the nature of luxury through a new exhibition simply titled Luxes that will open today at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, which he directs. The exhibition looks at luxury as the "a breeding ground for all paradoxes", capable of embodying both the most bleatable materialism and the most intangible psychological values of a civilization, but above all it is a lens to observe the evolution of society at the cultural level. After all, the organization of an exhibition on the subject and the reflection on the subject, assume a point of view on the already "external" to luxury - that is, the point of view of those who perceive luxury as a conglomerate of intangible values rather than material opulence the only true bearers of meaning in a world in which models of exponential growth and ideas of general well-being have crumbled.

An exhibition that explores the concept of luxury through its many incarnations through time, following its progressive liberation from materialistic conceptions and its approach to the modern conception of the New Luxury – a concept that even fashion brands, today, care to cultivate by placing an emphasis on the curation of their communication as on their products, associating with their creative output entire systems of values and cultures. The transition from Frida Giannini's Gucci to Alessandro Michele's is, for example, one of the most emblematic moments of these shifts, as well as the entire communication system that Simon Porte Jacquemus (whose designs are also exhibited within the exhibition) has built around his brand, whose success depends almost more on the aesthetics that the designer has been able to evoke and channel through social media – in open break with the old guard symbolized by Karl Lagerfeld's design who, instead of Jacquemus's linen corsets, are represented in the exhibition by the opulent dresses of the couture shows of Chanel and Chloé.