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For this other category, the discourses oriented toward the mechanisms of the production of luxury are made by operational managers, executives concerned with the functioning of their brand and the conditions of production of “the luxury effect.” They also need definitions, but more pragmatic ones.

Consider the case of Patrizio Bertelli, president of Prada: he defines luxury by a convergence of creation and intuition. Another example is the Comité Colbert, an association regrouping 82 French luxury houses in 2020 (plus 16 associated members and 6 European members), which stresses the alliance between tradition and modernity, know-how and creation, international reputation and culture of excellence.

For these approaches, what defines luxury is less its social implications than a set of qualifications embedded in the production of the object or service: quality of materials, technical know-how, and bold and creative talent, whose sustainability is ensured by the transmission of intangible values—tradition, artisanal exigency, quest for perfection.

The great fashion designer Coco Chanel used to define luxury simply as the opposite of vulgarity: a way to evade the question, which refers more to the mechanisms of perception, but which shows us a contrario how the discourses of the actors of the luxury world have become more profound in the postmodern world.

We can already hold on to two universes of clearly distinct representations, whose issues diverge and even conflict. But it is possible to refine this classification further.