Creations by Michel Goma.

When he was chief designer at the Haute Couture House Patou in the 1970s, Jean Paul Gaultier worked as his assistant

Source: Keystone / Getty Images

The French have Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermès.

We have Porsche, Mercedes and BMW: high-horsepower engineering.

Precise technology is a German export hit.

For the proverbial French way of life, however, the world knows and loves our neighboring country, especially Paris.

Savoir-vivre, or: life like God in France, with a Birkin bag and a champagne flute.

The tradition of producing refined and sought-after luxury goods goes back a long way to the ancien régime of the 17th century.

It did not come about by chance or by itself, as the ARTE documentary "Versailles - Where France invented luxury" shows.

He looks back on the origins of the manufacturing business from which an industry with its prestigious and profitable brands has grown that is still flourishing today.

display

Initially, the signs were pointing to a crisis: pompous court rulings and expensive wars strained the French state budget.

Imports doubled exports.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683), who became a kind of super minister under the Sun King Louis XIV, thought about a remedy.

In addition to high tariffs and the exploitation of the colonies, he primarily relied on the domestic production of high-quality goods, which the nobility had previously bought from abroad for millions of livres.

Glass and mirrors from Venice, for example, or cloth and lace from the Netherlands.

Under Colbert, spiritual envoys became industrial spies.

He recruited specialists from abroad.

And he established strict quality controls for domestic manufactured products.

Colbert's successfully managed state economy thank him for the successor to the manufacturing industry, which has grown into multibillion-dollar corporations up to the present day.

In honor of the founder of mercantilism, the association of French luxury manufacturers is called Comité Colbert.

The association founded by perfumer Jean-Jacques Guerlain in 1954 is backed by a good 80 names - from A for Alain Ducasse to Y for Yves Saint Laurent.

A good dozen top institutions are associated.

display

Those who “share the values ​​of the Colbert Comité” and, alongside couturiers, jewelers and champagne cellars, bring France's image into the world include the Louvre, Versailles Palace and the Sorbonne University.

The exclusive club emphasizes that it should be about more than disdainful economic goals: “The members represent France, its creativity and its art of living.

In other words, they serve as ambassadors for French culture abroad. "

Luxury as an integral part of France's culture

Luxury manufacturers base such self-confidence on hundreds of years of uninterrupted company history.

Glass from the Cristalleries de Saint-Louis has been around since 1586, porcelain from Sèvres at least since 1740. Until the mid-19th century, Hermès and Louis Vuitton joined the ranks of the big brands with their luggage.

At least as long the French model has been emulated in style and elegance elsewhere in Europe and around the world.

Neither the revolutionary end of the Ancien Régime and its courtly culture nor later wars and crises changed that.

Which is not least due to the loyalty of the French to traditions.

Luxury as an integral part of French culture is more than an assertion by the Colbert Comité.

And more than just being able to afford exquisite objects.

The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu undoubtedly had his compatriots in mind when he pointed out the interplay between economic and cultural capital in his 1979 standard work “La distinction” - in German: “The fine differences”.

The distinction, the demarcation, is also linked to the immaterial, to habitus.

"Anyone who flaunts luxury but does not behave appropriately is simply making a fool of himself," said French researcher Christoph Barmeyer in an interview with ARTE magazine.

display

The holder of the chair for intercultural communication at the University of Passau still sees an admiration in France for life at court and the nobility that “diffused into society”.

Barmeyer speaks of a triad: In addition to the habitus, i.e. the venerable behavior, the symbolic character of luxurious things counts.

And something else that money cannot simply buy: intellect.

Or better in French: Esprit.

Expressing yourself in a beautiful language is extremely important.

“That's why people talk less about negatives such as illnesses or that they run out of money,” says the scientist.

The Comité Colbert has 83 members, including champagne cellars such as Charles Heidsieck

Source: Pidjoe / Getty Images

In addition to the noble derivation, the French love of the noble expensive for Barmeyer also has a religious component.

"Luxury is very much linked to Catholicism," he says.

Already in the churches one can see: “Here there is display.” This is different in Protestantism, where function is sober.

This explains understatement, for example in Northern Germany or England: You have the money, but you don't show it.

The Protestant asks for the equivalent of the high price.

Barmeyer: “In France they simply say: se faire plaisir - treat yourself to something.” Luxury is always something emotional and irrational.

The Jena philosopher Lambert Wiesing calls this “Dadaism of possession” in his 2015 volume “Luxus”.

It is about getting rid of the usual notions of a supposedly sensible life and asserting yourself “against bourgeois norms”.

Wiesing separates the luxury experience from the swank.

A fine distinction that 250 years earlier in the "Economic Encyclopedia" by Johann Georg Krünitz led to the conclusion: "Every luxury is a waste, but not every kind of waste is therefore also a luxury."

Nowadays tourists from Asia often wear the insignia of the luxury brands - rather without a corresponding cultural imprint.

In addition to increasingly dizzying prices, the French regular customers spoil the buying mood.

The critical examination of the subject in the motherland of fine living goes back as far as France's luxury tradition itself. In 1699, François Fénelon, a nobleman from Périgord, published “Les Aventures de Télémaque” (“The Adventures of Telemach”).

The book was understood as a denunciation of opulence, for which Louis XIV banned him from the court in Versailles.

The fun stops with luxury.

This article first appeared in ARTE magazine

Source: Arte magazine