هنر به عنوان وسیله ای برای خلق مجدد کمیابی و ارزش برندهای لوکس Art as a means to recreate luxury brands’ rarity and value

1. Introduction Over the last twenty years, luxury has emerged as an industry featuring corporate giants, extremely elaborate management processes (Brun & Castelli, 2013; Kapferer & Michaut, 2015), strict financial policies (Becker & Nobre, 2013; Som & Pape, 2015) and a sophisticated business model (Chevalier & Mazzalovo, 2012). Luxury firms thus engage in practices similar to those observed on the mass market, with high launch and advertising costs, an ever-growing number of new products, shorter product lifespans, and the need for short-term fi- nancial results, whilst simultaneously seeking to maintain the perception of selectivity and rarity (Brun & Castelli, 2013; Sicard, 2010). The extensive body of literature on the subject concurs that the luxury sector is now a tiered market where exceptional elitist luxury coexists with accessible, trivialized, and demythologized mass luxury (Berthon, Pitt, Parent, & Berthon, 2009; Chattalas & Shukla, 2015; Dubois, Laurent, & Czellar, 2005; Lipovetsky & Roux, 2003). The world of luxury duly appears as an antinomian synthesis of financial logic versus aesthetic logic, and productivity constraints versus traditional craftsmanship, which could ultimately lead to a loss of rarity value and consequently a loss of prestige (Dubois & Laurent, 1994; Kapferer, 2014), especially at a time when a growing middle class in emerging countries is increasingly hungry for luxury goods (Bian & Forsythe, 2012; Granot, Russell, & Brashear-Alejandro, 2013; Silverstein & Fiske, 2003). This situation challenges the ontological dimension of exclusivity and rarity associated with luxury. The problem is that as a steadily growing number of consumers buy luxury goods, the perceived value of the latter decreases for many of the customers who consider rarity to be the key component of a luxury purchase (Godey et al., 2013; Lipovetsky & Roux, 2003; Sicard, 2010; Wiedmann, Hennigs, & Siebels, 2007). Within the same timeframe, several major luxury brands have linked their name with the most en-vogue artists. Prestige brands are increasingly ready to put their identity in the hands of renowned artists and designers in order to appear avant-garde and elitist (Kapferer, 2014; Lee, Chen, & Wang, 2015; Thomas, 2007). Longchamp bags have been revisited by Jean-Luc Moerman; Marc Newson renovated the Jaeger-LeCoultre Atmos 561 clock; and James Rosenquist, Philip Starck and Richard Prince have all designed scarves for Louis Vuitton. Bridging art and luxury is not new: we just need to think of the Mondrian dress by Yves Saint Laurent, and the friendships forged between Louis Vuitton and the Impressionists, and between Coco Chanel, Stravinsky and Cocteau. The novelty is that these sporadic relationships have now become almost systematic (Fillis, 2011; Schroeder, 2006) and the worlds of art and luxury are growing closer every day. These changes have led to the need for a clearer understanding of the relationship between art and luxury brands. Clarification of the relations between the two sectors could shed new light on the field of luxury, leading to a better understanding of key aspects of luxury brand management (Berthon et al., 2009; Emile & Craig-Lees, 2011; Granot et al., 2013).