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In order to measure this abundance of meanings, we may note the growing number of expressions that, today, use it. The term now needs articles and adjectives to clarify its meanings.

Here are a few modern examples: authentic luxury is quite frequent as an expression and we will discuss it further; luxury and grand luxury was advertised by the great car designer Battista Pininfarina (lusso e gran lusso) on a 1931 poster where a car was presented on a pedestal like in a museum. This is an interesting segmentation, where already lies the idea of a form of an affordable luxury suitable for all budgets. More recently, the economist Danielle Allérès extrapolated the common sense of Pininfarina suggesting a distinction between accessible, intermediate, and inaccessible luxuries. Even luxury yogurt is spreading in food marketing. We hear more and more in casual talks and in advertising the expression “my luxury”—which is not yours and has the defect of not constituting a market on its own.

Ostentatious luxury or “bling-bling” has long been present in the media. It may evoke a traditional luxury that is opposed, of course, to the new luxury, and so on. Social or even academic trends regularly provide their lot of new expressions on the subject.

Two relevant points can be detected in this diversity. The first is that to each his own luxury: the concept has ceased to mark a boundary between opulence and economic discomfort—it is now a sign that needs additional specific attributes to perform its function of distinction in a human group. This ability of luxury to indefinitely segment the markets shows us how it has been able to blend, by transforming itself, in our modern civilization of mass consumption.

The second point is that this modern luxury appears to carry rather positive connotations. Obviously, it also has its excesses, its indecency; however, the fact that we can now speak of luxury in positive terms already certifies a remarkable semantic evolution. In order to measure this evolution, we must return to the etymology.