In the anthology - which has already been accepted for publication by Carlssons förlag - eight historians and fashion scholars address the problems of luxury in a long-term historical perspective. Criticism of excess through so-called opulence regulations as well as the plea for the national economic importance of luxury are important socio-political elements historically and in the present. For example, criticism of luxury and opulence was at the center of the animated economic debate of the early Age of Liberty when new economic policies were being formulated. A new class of merchants, the shipbrothers of the Old City, emerged - for them and many other social elites, manifest luxury consumption of new goods: clothes, colonial goods, porcelain, furniture and art was a way of manifesting their social distinctiveness from the nobility, the old social elite. While luxury is an extensive international research area - researchers such as Maxine Berg and Linda Levy Peck in their recent work point out the luxury industry and its global context with imperialism and the colonies as central research areas - there is no comprehensive work on luxury in a historical perspective for Sweden. The anthology is intended for use in the academic teaching of fashion studies and history at Swedish universities and colleges, but will also be sold in bookstores.