ABSTRACT
Luxury goods inspire the sense of being entitled by virtue of the high purchasing power required and a creation of exclusivity. The social positioning of luxury items in the contemporary age is very distinct from that of the seventeenth century. Once considered a vice, the consumption of luxury goods has become an essential tool as a marker of economic status. According to Thorstein Veblen the consumption of luxury goods is a “public display of one’s economic power.” He talks about the effects of “conspicuous consumption” on consumer behavior. This role of luxury goods in structuring an identity can be further evaluated with the help of Marx Weber’s concept of ‘charisma’. In the recent years luxury goods advertising utilize the charm of old world heritage in their narratives. This paper proposes to study Instagram posts of two Indian luxury brands, namely, Forest Essentials and Sabyasachi. Both the brands exoticisize their products by connecting to a temporal space which situates the narrative in an apparent glorious past and its grandeur. The images are used to evoke a sense of aesthetic pleasure alone. The narrative thus constructed deliberately ignores the darker aspects of the oriental past, namely exploitation of laborers and extreme poverty of artisans. Starting from exquisite herbal remedies to clothing and jewelry inspired by the Royal Households of the past, these two brands utilize the concepts of handcrafted exclusive goods adding a stature to which the consumers aspire.
