Canadian Critical Luxury Studies

Canadian Critical Luxury Studies: Decentring Luxury is a dynamic new contribution to the study of luxury. The essays in this collection challenge Euro- and US-centric perceptions that bind luxury to either a colonial past or a consumerist present.

The book announces a new collective of thinkers who focus on Indigenous and Canadian instances of luxurious production, experiences and sites to propose a new definition of luxury. Each of the interdisciplinary contributions analyses luxury from different vantage points to understand why luxury has succeeded or failed in the Canadian context.

From the history of the fur trade to the latest Indigenous fashion movement, from the T. Eaton Co.’s 1920s Made-in-Canada campaign to the on-again-off-again Toronto Fashion Week, from Vancouver public art commissions to Montréal’s future-forward fashiontech sector, the essays explain what makes and breaks Canadian luxury.

These original case studies redefine luxury for Canada—a former colonial possession and contemporary second-tier cultural market—and lay the foundation for the critical study of luxury in other historically secondary geographies that produce, consume and circulate material and symbolic luxuries. The collection challenges old myths and the mystique surrounding luxury to give it a new lustre that shines light on those actors who have been historically excluded from its privilege: Indigenous peoples, immigrants and the working classes.