Expensive vs luxury
And a long list of luxurious things for you to try
Hey!
I keep thinking about how luxury has turned into something that feels like it should always be expensive, but recently I've been finding that the most luxurious things aren’t directly related to a cost.
There are many things that are expensive, sold as luxurious, but aren’t actually luxurious. A lot of skincare brands come to mind. A lot of clothing brands are expensive but fall apart quickly.
I suppose the reason that we’ve started to equate it to expensive is because it’s the only direct way that we can demonstrate the value of that thing to the rest of the world.
Time is the ingredient to luxury
Time is an ingredient. This is something that, as I age (ha) has felt more truthful. Time is the ingredient to make things better.
In November I made a trip to New Orleans. It’s curious that this is a city which in recent times has been decimated by Hurricane Katrina, and in less recent times has been a key area to the slavery and colonisation of the United States, and yet is luxurious.
The most obvious icon of this (for me) was the gas lamps out the front of almost every house. The houses themselves were old, and I’d imagine not built with the word “luxury” in mind. I think it had to do with the following:
Most houses had these lamps. This was such a common thing in New Orleans, and yet something that feels so well built and sturdy.
Outside of New Orleans, this is a novel thing. You don’t get to see such a beautiful attention to detail in many other places, let alone in contrast to the houses which were just regular - not big homes with clear monetary investment in them.
There was so much care in normalising a small little baby gas lamp out the front of everyone's house. Initially, I had presumed the reason for having these lamps was for pragmatic reasons, but in the end the historic lighting was to illuminate the Quarter's architectural treasures and create a warm, inviting ambiance.
They still exist despite not needing to (there are more efficient ways to create light now).
In a way, luxury becomes hard to differentiate from expensive because we’ve sort of forgotten how to prioritise an aesthetic decision.
By this I mean we’re so focused on picking the thing that makes the most practical sense (we wouldn’t have gas lamps today because gas is bad, waste of energy, not actually necessary), that we forget the genuine joy that seeing a leaping flame might give us.
And this is why New Orleans is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever visited
Because so many choices were made for the beauty of the thing, rather than the practicality of the thing.
But then of course, you think about it, and if you’re like me, you realise that it’s because of the complexity and the cultural textures it’s been influenced by. It’s a melting pot of cultures. Creole literally means a language that has developed by blending two or more languages.
This birthed jazz, a luxury
The mood that soft jazz brings into a room is smooth, sophisticated, luxurious. And yet, it’s a genre of music which evolved from church hymns, slave songs, and field chants. Jazz music came after Louisiana introduced slave laws which barred slave owners from making slaves work on Sundays, and slaves would use that newfound time to join weekly gatherings and use music as a way to find joy.
This music was created as a way of creating joy for those who had the least, and is now adopted in expensive spaces: 5-star hotel lobbies, great restaurants, and on audio set ups of which I don’t want to know the cost.
But now jazz represents expensive
So in many ways, jazz (never intended for rich people) has become this keyboard shortcut of showing that you’ve got a certain richness in culture - a luxury perhaps - and is played in expensive spaces.
A once joyful luxury (the way we’re talking about it here, a beautiful thing that has evolved over a long period of time with a blend of influences over that long period of time), has been co-opted by those who live a more expensive life, to give the impression of having a richness in their life.
The luxury of jazz feels like it is cheapened by putting it into an expensive space trying to get the valour from the jazz music, you know? Just me?
When someone says something is expensive they mean it’s not good value for them
Kale is quite good to grow in your backyard because it’s one of the fastest growing and most nutritious foods; the seeds are cheap to buy. And yet the perception of it is that it’s a luxury. It’s mentioned on goop.com 1,530 times. Some people come to the conclusion that kale is not for them because it is too fancy. This leads me to…
Expensive but shouldn’t be
Russian kale (incidentally the best one to grow in your backyard, because it wilts quickly once picked but has the best flavour. This is why it’s not available at supermarkets) is one of the oldest descendants of cabbage, and has been around since the 1800s. Having known it was so nutritious, and it has been around for 140 years, and yet it’s only become a buzzy thing in the last decade. This bothers me; this is a peasant food which has been gentrified and ultimately made some people think kale is not for them. Kale is for everyone!
Expensive and should be
On the other side of that is banh mi, which is, for many, a beautiful meal in a crunchy baguette. One of my favourite places to eat in the world is Ca Com Banh Mi Bar in Richmond. Every time I’m in Richmond, I’ve already mapped out a visit to a banh mi at Ca Com. I also have the tshirt. Their banh mi is $17. This is expensive by banh mi standards.
But you can see the level of effort the team goes to: everything is made from thoughtful ingredients totally from scratch. The price is kind of amazing for the wood grilled meats, the mayonnaise made from scratch, the carefully soured herbs, home made sausage, the (incredible) chilli oil (that you can also buy). It’s a genuine luxury and a pleasure to eat. When you stop to consider the long journey that each component of the sandwich took to get to your mouth, $17 suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.
Okay okay okay, so what else is luxurious?
Luxury is something thoughtful, rooted in time to develop it, and a respect to the things that came before it. Something which is luxurious is something that brings you comfort. But this is a very conceptual way to explain it.
Here are some things that are luxurious. This is a list that does not end.
A homemade meal, made from other homemade elements (like butter)
Eating a meal made by mum for the first time in a while
Candles on the table at dinner
Coffee in a mug, sitting at the kitchen table
When sunlight catches steam from your coffee perfectly and it looks so cool and you remember that it’s a gas from something that used to be coffee
Gas lamps out the front of normal houses
A dinner with friends but you all take from one dish in the middle of the table
A really great ceramic dish
Flowers (here’s a book about picking flowers based on colour)
A sunset in a place you’ve never been before
A sunrise you had to work to get out of bed to see
Making a long list of luxurious things in your life
Okay, see you soon <3