The value of luxury brand is always latently charged with elements of sacredness. Fashion expresses symbolic meaning that allows customers’ experience to be sacralized in many ways. Hence, customers’ necessity to express their existence is also possible thanks to luxury brand which is defined as exclusive and image-driven. Building on Georg Simmel’s sociological theory of equalization and differentiation behavior in fashion and René Girard’s mimetic theory of sacred, this paper investigates the sacredness in perception of luxury brands. Different customers stereotypes can be defined resulting in what we conceptualize as the sacred experience framework. Specifically, the authors identify three dimensions of the framework, namely the active and passive attitude, the personal and social motivation, and the idolatrous and realist perspective. The framework can be used for strategic positioning of luxury brand. The focus is on risks and threats related to idolatrous positioning of luxury brand and opportunities related to realist positioning. Luxury brand sustainability is possible by fostering the symbolic myth that reflects customer sacred experience. The aim of this paper is a formulation of a general theory of luxury, which to our best knowledge has not been well defined yet. Such a new theory of luxury requires that customers’ needs and motivations theories show how existential desire should be fueled also by sacredness.

• Critiano Ciappei(University of Florence, Italy)
• Lamberto Zollo(University of Florence, Italy)
• Andrea Boccardi(University of Florence, Italy)