«Luxury items…. are without a doubt one of the great tools for the spreading of money and wealth in a State»; thus commented the Neapolitan economist and philosopher Gaetano Filangeri over two centuries ago, in his La scienza della legislazione dated 1785. His words are to be seen in the context of the heightened dispute during the eighteenth century, between those that considered luxury as a form of costly pomp, unproductive and when it came down to it immoral, and those (like Filangeri) who glimpsed signs of progress, of free exchange and social evolution therein.