Le Goût du luxe: the new book by Dora Baghriche
For a long time, Dora Baghriche let perfumes do the talking. For nearly twenty years, she worked behind the scenes for the big names, creating fragrances for Jean Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent, Kenzo, Versace and Issey Miyake. Her precise, demanding olfactory style was honed at DSM-Firmenich. In 2025, she chose a different pace with a more confidential, personal approach to perfumery, joining the Luzi design house as Master Perfumer. At the same time, another passion emerged: literature. After Le Goût des senteurs (The Taste of Scents), Dora Baghriche published Le Goût du luxe (The Taste of Luxury). A literary anthology that questions luxury in a different way.
A unique book offering contemporary reflections
With more than 150 creations for various houses, Dora Baghriche approaches luxury not through objects, but through text. Le Goût du luxe is part of the Mercure de France's ‘Le goût de’ collection and takes a more ontological approach.
From Voltaire to Annie Ernaux, from Seneca to Loïc Prigent, the selected texts span centuries, styles and registers. Ancient philosophy, classical literature, contemporary writing and journalistic perspectives: the book paints a sensitive picture of luxury, from Antiquity to TikTok. A literary approach that allows us to shift our perspective. What is luxury?
"Luxury is multifaceted, sprawling, chameleon-like. It changes according to the times, cultures and individuals. This is precisely what makes it so difficult to define and so fascinating to observe. What interests me are the human issues behind luxury. What it says about our desires, our contradictions, our relationship with time, nature and others," says D. Baghriche.
‘Man is a creature of desire, not a creation of need,’ wrote Gaston Bachelard in La Psychanalyse du feu.
This sentence, central to the book, illuminates Dora Baghriche's entire approach. Luxury that is more revealing of human desire, far beyond material necessity. It becomes the language, sometimes intimate, sometimes collective, that expresses our deepest aspirations.
Luxury: fascinating or misunderstood?
For the writer, the answer is clear: because the subject is too often approached in a reductive manner. Money, price, great fortunes, iconic brands, inaccessibility: these elements, omnipresent in the collective imagination, tell only a tiny part of the story, as D. Baghriche demonstrates.
‘Luxury has always existed in many forms. It has been religious, political, aesthetic and moral. It is part of rituals, cities, nature and spirituality. It has sometimes been celebrated, sometimes fought against. Victor Hugo already pointed this out in Les Misérables: “Let us say in passing that hatred of luxury would not be a necessary hatred. Such hatred would imply hatred of the arts.”’
This ambivalence is palpable throughout the book. Luxury unites as much as it divides. It attracts as much as it worries. It crystallises social tensions, but it also fuels creativity, emotion and dreams. In this sense, the book seeks neither to defend nor condemn luxury, but rather to offer a nuanced perspective.
Multifaceted luxury: from price to priceless
The question of price naturally runs through Le Goût du luxe. ‘Does luxury have a price?’ Dora Baghriche's answer is deliberately paradoxical: luxury is both something that has a price and something that does not.
‘We often talk about luxury as a price, a status, or restricted access. But luxury has never been limited to that. It is much older, more instinctive, almost anthropological.’
The book distinguishes between several dimensions. First, there is material luxury, moral luxury, experiential luxury, and immaterial luxury. Some chapters question the escalation of ‘no limits’, such as this article by Alexandra Marchand devoted to an ‘exorbitantly priced’ panettone, revealing our sometimes excessive relationship with rarity and exclusivity. Other texts, on the contrary, celebrate luxuries without market value, such as regained time, freedom, or nature.
This is where Dora Baghriche's personal definition of luxury takes shape. Inspired by Marguerite Yourcenar, for whom luxury is a form of freedom, and by George Sand, who saw flamboyant nature as ‘the’ ultimate luxury, the author offers a chameleon-like, sprawling and deeply sensitive vision. Luxury becomes a state of mind, a relationship with the world, a way of inhabiting reality with intensity and attention.
A literary perspective on a social debate
By bringing together classic, modern, philosophical and popular texts, Dora Baghriche creates a unique space for dialogue.
"Bringing Seneca, Voltaire, Annie Ernaux and Loïc Prigent into dialogue was a way of reminding us that luxury transcends all eras and registers, without ever disappearing. Marie-Antoinette meets a bartender from the Ritz, Seneca exchanges views with contemporary voices, high culture encounters popular culture."
This mix reveals the transformation of luxury, in step with social, economic and cultural changes. It is sometimes ostentatious, sometimes discreet; sometimes "bling", sometimes "soft". These are just some of the expressions we use to describe it, but it remains the star of our collective desires.
In this sense, the book is part of contemporary debates on the new values espoused by Gen Z. By broadening the concept of luxury to include immaterial dimensions (time, love, nature, breathing), Dora Baghriche offers an almost conciliatory interpretation.
The Taste of Luxury
Texts selected and presented by: Dora Baghriche
Collection: Le Petit Mercure / ‘Le goût de’
Publisher: Mercure de France
Publication date: 15 January 2026
Translated by Bethszabee Garner
