This project focuses on the cognitive and affective implications of elegance, the range of phenomena that have the potential to be elegant, and the aesthetic and phenomenological qualia of (experiencing) elegance. Moreover, it investigates similarities and differences of elegance compared to grace, beauty, and sexiness. Classical philosophical aesthetics has only marginally addressed elegance, and psychological aesthetics has even completely ignored it. The concept was first established in the context of 16th and 17th century rhetoric („elegant diction,“ „elegant wording“); to this day, it has retained a strong cognitive dimension („elegant solutions“ in mathematics, programming, etc.). At the same time, the concept is now primarily used in visual aesthetics (elegant clothing, elegant architecture, elegant carriages and cars, etc.). Our project is the first to use modern scientific methods to study elegance in a comprehensive fashion.