From Pharaohs to SuperLuxury

Luxury and SuperLuxury

The word comes from the Latin luxus, excess. Within luxury there is a clear hierarchy, and the top of it behaves differently from the rest.

Where luxury began

Scarce materials, master craft, a story of power or the divine, and long-distance trade. Every luxury house still uses the four ingredients the ancient world established.

1. c. 2600 BCE

   The Royal Tombs of Ur

   Gold headdresses, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and carnelian worked by Indus Valley craftsmen — luxury defined by materials that had to travel.

2. c. 1323 BCE

   Tutankhamun

   Gold, the flesh of the gods: Egyptian funerary treasure ties luxury to power and immortality.

3. 215 BCE

   Rome legislates against luxury

   The Lex Oppia limits how much gold a woman may wear; Tyrian purple is reserved for senators and emperors. Pliny complains of the gold Rome loses to India and China.

4. Han dynasty

   The Silk Road

   Chinese silk, jade and lacquer travel west as currency and status; glass, horses and precious metals travel east.

5. Antiquity to 1700s

   Golconda, Hyderabad

   India is the world's only source of diamonds. The Golconda mines near today's Hyderabad yield the Koh-i-Noor, the Hope and the Daria-i-Noor — "Golconda" is still the term for the purest diamonds.

6. 1291

   Murano

   Venice moves its glassmakers to Murano and forbids them to leave. Craft becomes a state secret.

7. 1660s

   Colbert and Versailles

   Louis XIV's minister makes French luxury national policy through royal manufactories. France's luxury association still bears his name.

8. 1837–1858

   The maisons

   Hermès, Cartier and Louis Vuitton serve railway-age travellers; Charles Frederick Worth invents haute couture and puts the designer's label in the garment.

9. 1906–1947

   Motorcars and modern fashion

   Rolls-Royce, Bugatti, Chanel, Gucci, Dior's New Look and the first Ferrari road car.

10. 1987–1999

    The groups

    LVMH, Richemont and Kering bring capital, global retail and marketing scale to family houses.

177 houses, from Hōshi Ryokan in 718 to Phoebe Philo in 2023. The cluster after 1800 shows how the railway age, and later the twentieth century, created most of today's great names.

Register of luxury houses

177 houses grouped by century from 1500, as one 1900–1949 period, and by decade from 1950, with a short prelude of houses older than 1500. Country of origin is where the house was founded. The Luxury and SuperLuxury tiers are an editorial classification by Super Luxury Research.

Founding dates follow each house's own published heritage; some early dates rest on company records rather than independent documentation.

The market at a glance

Luxury is one of humanity's oldest economic ideas. What changes is who supplies it — temple workshops, royal manufactories, family maisons, global groups and now an ultra-exclusive tier we call SuperLuxury.

Sources: Bain & Company and Altagamma (November 2025, June 2026); ECCIA and Bain (July 2025).

What the institutions say

Consultancies and national trade associations measure luxury in different ways — consumer spending, producer turnover, exports and jobs — so their figures complement each other rather than add up.

SuperLuxury today

The market has split. Aspirational luxury is squeezed by price rises and a shrinking customer base, while the very top proves resilient. Seven traits set it apart.