TRAVEL + LUXURY SPECIAL
Mere life is a luxury
1
In these five words above lies the conundrum of our Special topic.
1 L[A] 2/2020, BooneOakley, Charlotte, North Carolina The issue the work originally appeared in is noted. More information and full credits at luerzersarchive.com
Both luxury and travel are very broad concepts and are very hard to define. And yet they are incredibly important ... to all. Life itself, indeed. The two concepts that might seem at first glance non-essential are somehow the essence of enjoying life rather than enduring it. To give the fuller quote from which the headline is drawn, here are Mark Twain’s words: “Mere life is a luxury, and the color of the grass, of the flowers, of the sky, the wind in the trees, the outlines of the horizon, the forms of clouds, all give a pleasure as exquisite as the sweetest music to the ear famishing for it.” Put that way, everything may be seen as potentially luxury or travel as we pass through our lives. And, taken to absolute extremes, one person’s luxury adventure trip can seem close – and yet entirely different – to the horrific elements that make up another’s desperate journey from one country to another in search of a future, employment or refuge. Passages through life that are worlds apart and yet in the same world, using some of the same space and tools. ‘Travel’ and ‘luxury’ are shape-shifting concepts, calling up another dimension, when applied to the atoms and the hours of our days. We often see the two concepts together, as in luxury travel, be it as transport or location or activity, or even the suitcases or suits we choose. But we also see them separately: as in luxury chocolates and travel essentials, where they start to mean something quite different. Even when we try to reduce these two words to be simple descriptors – be it ‘comfort and style’ for luxury, or ‘long journey’ for travel – they wriggle free, refusing to be specific. What is style and what is long? In Lürzer’s Archive’s categories, we may position travel and luxury as broad areas that range from the mundane and affordable (as in those chocolates and essentials mentioned before) to the most out-there of outside activities and the most extravagant of unnecessary expenditures. They are two of the most teasingly challenging areas to build brands within. This is in part because they are über-labels for describing anything … cars, bags, watches, train and airline seats, water and wine, and so on. Just about everything can sit under these wrapper words. That is, we might suggest, because both are forms of myth-making, similar to the building blocks of making any brand. They are all about belief systems and values, rather than actual things or places. Travel™ and Luxury® might be mega brands under which so much else sits. We can wrap so much with them ... indeed, right now, many of you are perhaps doing that in creating the next brands, the next ads. In this Special we aim to give you raw material, food for thought and perhaps even inspiration. We examined the recent deep archives of L[A] and pulled out some of the best luxury and travel ads. Then we juxtapose them over the following pages with a few rare words, short statements that are each a reduction of some of the finer things said about luxury and travel. Et voilà! It’s for you to enjoy and just think about what luxury and travel might mean now and ahead. It can be anything and yet it will be something intensely personal ... like life. As Mr Twain said. Vol 1/2023
160–161
