Because mass-produced kind of takes the lux out of luxury

I've always loved handmade things. I suppose it's got something to do with my mother, a highly skilled seamstress, sewing our clothes as children. In high school I wore items that she'd create out of the (sometimes ridiculous) sketches I drew. She even made my prom dress, styled after a too expensive-for-prom Lillie Rubin cocktail "piece". Now we have *little white dress* on Etsy. You don't know Etsy? Well you should. It's a platform for all things handmade and one-of-a-kind (read not mass-produced). It's become extremely popular. Perhaps it's the recession, perhaps it's a backlash to the formulaic or even an avoidance of prol drift. Everyone wants to be a special snowflake.

In WSJ Magazine this weekend, there was a great article on this Zeitgeist, or this spirit of the times.


"...And so, the pendulum swings back. To re-engage with an ethic that values excellence over commercialism...Craftsmanship is about doing something well for its own sake....An artisan’s expertise exists even in absence of—or despite—market demand for it. The value of this is particularly relevant in a recessed economy where intellectual talents are suddenly expendable. Yet as service-industry jobs are downsized and eliminated, we witness the popularity of do-it-yourself projects, in knitting, in Web sites like Etsy.com, where thousands of people display and sell unique crafts that reflect individualism not mass-market designer trends. “The corporate economy doesn’t have much room for steady accumulation of experience,” Crawford says, “and craftsmanship is appealing as an antidote to that.”

Artisans like Carol Gilbert, of Yorktown Road on Etsy, thoroughly enjoy the process. She goes to great lengths to create her work.

"I hand-dye the fabrics, draft every pattern, construct each piece and document the process with abstract and partial images. I thoroughly enjoy this work that I do. " 

{Mum clutch by Yorktown Road}

So for me, luxury is a well-crafted, rare piece. It doesn't necessarily need to be expensive; it just needs to be thoughtful in its construction.

How do you define luxury?