What would you choose if you could indulge in a special luxury today? A precious watch? An extraordinary car? A journey? Or perhaps simply a day that belongs to no one but you?
The answer to this question would probably be different today than it was a few decades ago. Our understanding of luxury is changing. Alongside price, prestige and exclusivity, other values are becoming increasingly important: time, calm, attention, individuality, quality, or the freedom to make our own decisions.
This shift has been discussed for several years under the term “New Luxury”. But does it really represent a new understanding of luxury – or merely a new term for a very old human phenomenon?
Luxury is older than any luxury brand
Luxury can first be considered quite independently of specific products. Historically, what was regarded as luxurious has always depended on what was rare, difficult to obtain or particularly desirable within society.
Luxury is therefore not a fixed product category. Rather, it is a socially and psychologically evolving system of values.
The things we desire change considerably faster than the underlying human needs.
People have always sought recognition and belonging. We want to be part of a social group with which we identify. At the same time, we want to be perceived as individuals both within and beyond that group.
It is precisely within this tension that luxury develops much of its psychological power.
Belonging – while still being different
A luxury object can initially signal belonging. Anyone who wears certain clothes, visits certain places or owns certain products communicates, consciously or unconsciously: I belong to this group.
At the same time, luxury also works in the opposite direction. It enables differentiation.
Two levels can be distinguished here.
Broad differentiation distinguishes one’s own social group from others. Traditional status symbols operate particularly clearly according to this principle.
More interesting is fine differentiation within one’s own peer group. When many people within a social group have access to similar status symbols, ownership alone becomes increasingly less effective as a means of distinction.
More subtle criteria then become important: Which model do I choose? Do I know a small manufacturer that others have not yet discovered? Do I understand the quality of a product? Do I possess knowledge, taste and judgement?
Status does not disappear as a result. Its code changes.
The highly visible “Look what I can afford” can become a much more subtle “Those who know will understand why I chose this.”
Brand recognition gives way to connoisseurship.
Why New Luxury presupposes traditional luxury
For precisely this reason, New Luxury does not emerge in a social vacuum.
As a broad social trend, it finds particularly favourable conditions in mature affluent societies. A certain level of material prosperity must first exist, and traditional luxury codes must already be established. People need to know which brands, products and symbols have conventionally stood for success and social position.
As prosperity grows, however, many of these symbols become more accessible. Internationalisation, mass production and increasing purchasing power have led to products that were once reserved for small social groups reaching much larger markets today.
At first, this represents a major success for traditional luxury. At the same time, however, it creates an interesting paradox:
The more widely a status symbol spreads, the less capable it may become of differentiating its owner.
This may be one of the essential preconditions for New Luxury.
Those who can already own a great deal eventually begin to ask a different question: What truly matters to me?
New Luxury would therefore be less a counter-movement to traditional luxury than its possible next stage of development.
Scarcity remains – only what is scarce changes
One fundamental principle of luxury remains surprisingly stable: Scarcity creates value.
What changes is what is scarce.
In earlier societies, high-quality material goods were almost unattainable for most people. Today, many people live in a world of material abundance while at the same time experiencing a lack of entirely different resources.
Time. Attention. Calm. Personal freedom. Orientation.
Craftsmanship, authentic products, independent ideas and genuine personal relationships can also be perceived as scarce in an increasingly standardised, accelerated and digital world.
This fundamentally changes our understanding of luxury.
Someone who can acquire almost anything materially may find a free afternoon more valuable than yet another object.
In the past, possessions were scarce. Today, time is often scarce.
And perhaps even more so: the ability to decide freely how that time is used.
From more to better
One of the clearest shifts within New Luxury can therefore be expressed in two words:
More → better.
The quantity of possessions loses importance compared with the quality of one’s choices.
An object can be valuable because it is exceptionally well designed, because its origin is transparent, because people with particular expertise have worked on it, or because it can be used for decades.
Authenticity and provenance are also becoming more important. People want to know who stands behind a product, why it was created, and whether the product, manufacturer and story credibly belong together.
Independence also takes on a new value. Precisely because almost everything is available, a product can become particularly interesting when it follows a clear idea of its own instead of trying to meet as many expectations as possible.
The buyer then decides less on the basis of general recognition and more on personal conviction.
From ownership to experience
At the same time, the relationship with the object itself is changing.
The value of a product no longer ends with owning it. Increasingly important is what it does for its owner.
How does it feel? What kind of experience does it enable? What story becomes associated with it? Does it become a personal companion over many years?
The development is therefore less “product or experience” and more:
Product → product + experience.
A material object can create immaterial value.
This also helps explain why longevity is becoming more attractive again. In a culture of constant novelty, permanence itself can become exclusive.
A product that still functions after ten or twenty years, still feels relevant and remains important to its owner possesses a quality that can hardly be compared with short-term novelty.
This is where New Luxury and sustainability meet in a natural way: high-quality products that can be repaired and are valued over the long term need to be replaced less frequently.
When knowledge itself becomes a luxury factor
With an almost unlimited range of choices, another scarce resource emerges: orientation.
Thousands of products are available. Countless brands promise quality. Information is accessible at any time – and precisely for that reason, it becomes more difficult to distinguish what matters from what is arbitrary.
Judgement becomes more important.
Anyone who engages deeply with a subject develops different criteria. A connoisseur recognises qualities that do not necessarily communicate themselves through a large logo or a high price.
Luxury therefore shifts, at least in part, from the price of the object to the quality of the decision.
This is a particularly interesting form of fine differentiation: not everyone has to recognise what is special. Perhaps it is enough if the owner understands it – together with a few people who possess similar knowledge.
Time and attention – the new scarce resources
On an even more fundamental level, our relationship with time and attention may also be changing.
Today, we have technological possibilities that would once have been unimaginable. At the same time, messages, emails, social media, streaming services, professional communication and advertising compete continuously for our attention.
As a result, calm and concentration are becoming precious.
In the future, perhaps we will even judge high-quality products and services according to whether they demand our attention – or whether they give attention back to us.
Time, too, takes on a new quality as a result.
Luxury would then not merely mean having a great deal of free time. The true luxury would lie in being able to use it on one’s own terms.
What might the luxury of the future look like?
Much suggests that traditional luxury will continue to exist. People will still take pleasure in well-known brands, exceptional materials, rare products and visible signs of success.
At the same time, however, the luxury market is likely to become increasingly differentiated.
Ownership is increasingly developing into meaning. Recognition is being complemented by independence. The product is expanding into an experience. Novelty competes with permanence. Mass communication is complemented by personal relationships. Brand knowledge develops into connoisseurship.
Smaller, distinctive manufacturers may also benefit from this development. If recognition alone no longer determines value, companies become more attractive when they possess an independent idea, a recognisable attitude and a credible origin.
The brand as a sender can increasingly develop into a community of shared values: people become interested in products whose underlying attitude corresponds with their own.
Perhaps it is not luxury that changes, but our measure of value
Ultimately, New Luxury leads to a much more fundamental question.
Who actually decides what is valuable?
In traditional luxury, the answer is more likely to be:
“This product is considered valuable.”
Its brand, its price, its rarity and its social recognition confirm its status.
New Luxury adds another question:
“Is this product valuable to me?”
The measure of value therefore shifts, at least to some extent, from the outside to the inside.
Ownership becomes choice.
Choice creates meaning.
And from the ability to determine one’s own measure of value ultimately emerges something that may itself be one of the most precious forms of luxury:
Sovereignty.
Perhaps this is the most far-reaching definition of New Luxury:
New Luxury is the increasing sovereignty of individuals to decide for themselves what is valuable to them.
New Luxury would then indeed be more than a passing trend. It would be the expression of a social development in which luxury increasingly also means the freedom to live according to one’s own values.
