Gilles Lipovetsky (born 24 September 1944) is a French philosopher, writer, and sociologist, professor at Stendhal University in Grenoble, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France.

[6] Lipovetsky began his philosophical career as a Marxist, similar to many others in the 1960s, affiliated with the "Socialisme ou Barbarie" which demanded the world not to transform it but rather to "swallow it.

[8] In 1987 he wrote L'Empire de l'éphémère : la mode et son destin dans les sociétés modernes continuing the argument of the 1983 work focusing on fashion as a reflection of individualism and hyper consumerism.

In this work, he states that the vision of a secular world started with Martin Luther's revolt against the Catholic Church, leading to the idea that one purpose of God is to define and protect individual rights.

[2] In Métamorphoses de la culture libérale – Éthique, médias, entreprise in 2002, he examines the paradoxes of hyper-modern democracies, with emphasis both on the individual, regionalization vs. globalization and the collective and a society that is both open and closed, concluding that they are interdependent.

Essai sur la société d'hyperconsommation in 2006 examines the multiplication and globalization of major brands and the connection between fashion and luxury which is the basis of hyper-consumerism.

In La société de déception (2006) he analyzes the concept of disappointment following the work of Jacques Lacan that desire creates a vacuum and can never be filled.

[2][10] He states that the focus of modern life is the new, which then quickly becomes old and we look for something else, leading to his notion of "hyper" as this need for new becomes faster in the age of Internet and social media, which also breaks down traditional institutions such as nation and family.