The Feeling Of Luxury
Luxury’s emerging redefinition
In 2018, 60 fashion influencers gathered at the launch party of a new boutique brand called Palessi. They marveled at the “stunning, elegant, sophisticated” shoes and bought them at a 1,800% markup—the exact same shoes that discount store Payless had for sale for $20. It was a prank pulled off by Payless to showcase that their products were good enough to pass for luxury goods.
The influencers got their money back and gave Payless some publicity, but the stunt raised the question of luxury’s complicated relationship with price. Must “luxury” and “affordable” be mutually exclusive? “There has been a ‘democratization’ of luxury fashion, where it is no longer exclusive to people of a certain socio-economic class or group,” said Brian Lee of Gartner L2. New players in the luxury ecology—resale marketplaces and subscription retail—have enabled a large new segment of consumers to discover, aspire to, enjoy, and give new meaning to luxury goods without having to afford the full price.
Luxury’s very definition has evolved, influenced by not only its newly ripened accessibility, but also consumer behavioral changes. Consumers are shifting spend from products and services to experiences. A study in 2018 showed that 78% of US millennials prefer paying for a “desirable experience or event to buying something desirable.” Experiences, not products, are the new measure of social status and were what make the Palessi store feel luxurious.
Sources: Glossy (December, 3, 2018) | Elle (November 30, 2018) | BoF (April 1, 2019) | Image: Payless