Eros, Luxus und Psyche

I’m not a fan of making resolutions, but I do have one for this year: to wear fine shoes again! I’m ditching common sneakers as much as possible, freeing my beautiful Jimmy Choos, Louboutins, and Amaatas from their boxes, and getting them back onto my shelves. Then, I’ll reconnect with eros and make more room in my life again for sensual escapades. The idea is to spite sober realities and gloomy predictions. My strategy for 2024: Cross the boundaries of modest humility and give a visible, perceivable expression to the personal longing for sensuousness and ecstasy. In their perfection, luxury products are practically predestined to engage in an erotic relationship with oneself and with the outer world. This is true for shoes, watches, jewelry, cars, yachts, and luggage. Design, materiality, function, and above all, artful production, come together in luxury products to form a promise of sensual experience and high eroticism. Far beyond the corridors of the shopping mall, and only as long as we stay sensitive to the magical encounters, sounds, and visual stimuli.

Microdosing as a new lifestyle option

At least since the mysterious Masha, played by Nicole Kidman, secretly served her retreat guests drugs in small amounts in the series “White Lotus”, microdosing has been a hip way for techies and creatives to hone their thinking and intensify inner peace; in a word, a way to transform themselves. Although the nature of this transformation isn’t exactly clear. Unfortunately, we have to wait for the results of longitudinal studies to know for sure, which is why I have to recommend that you hold off on psychoactive substances for the time being. But nothing says we can’t enjoy a daily microdose of luxury. It strikes the perfect balance between desire and fulfillment, helping us steer clear of excess. A little luxury every day activates our dopamine receptors and lets us tune into happiness and gratification like a latent hit of prosperity. In this light, luxury doesn’t only have therapeutic effects: It makes us happy and radiant. Pure attraction. What we desire as luxury behooves our own perspective, exposing our very personal desires.

An acquaintance recently said to me, “Luxury for me is the architect of my sensual world. An aphrodisiac. Great rooms in old grand hotels especially stir my passion and fantasy. I dive into a world before my time, shed any notion of who or what I am, switch off, and enjoy the ride.” Whether he prefers to do this alone or with a partner, he doesn’t say. In my mind, I saw him entering through the revolving door of a hotel on a bustling boulevard, at night and in his black wool coat. A cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, an attractive woman in stilettos hanging on his arm.

We’ll call what my acquaintance described a “liberating experience”, liberation from daily life and from his routines, a shedding of roles and obligations. That, too, is luxury. It is much more than material excess, silk bed sheets, fine dining, and expensive wine. It is a life elixir that sends us on a journey to have new sensual experiences or even to extend the limits of ourselves. Pushing these limits makes it so sexy. It offers more than extravagance and sophistication; that is merely its seductive appearance. Luxury is something radical, a counterpoint to mediocrity and modesty. In thought and deed. It challenges us to turn the good into the best and to rightfully enjoy it. From the triad of eros, luxury, and psyche, a fascinating dynamic emerges. The trick is maintaining the balance.