{"id":514,"date":"2015-02-19T22:23:29","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T22:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/?p=514"},"modified":"2025-04-21T13:27:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T13:27:01","slug":"what-does-luxury-mean-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/?p=514","title":{"rendered":"What Does Luxury Mean Today?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m often confounded at what merchandisers, designers and architects\/builders call luxury. There are luxury apartments, luxury goods, luxury bath items, luxury home decor; the word is ubiquitous. Luxury was once used to describe things that were unique, extravagant and exquisitely comfortable. In my opinion, the word \u201cluxury\u201d has been hijacked. Marketers are only concerned with the term conveying affluence, not magnificence. There was a time when you bought a pair of Bruno Magli or Salvatore Ferragamo shoes, you knew you were buying something luxurious and exquisitely well-crafted, and that these items were something few could own. The automobile industry USED<\/b> to know luxury very well. Cadillac, Lincoln and Mercedes all knew what luxury meant; to be pampered, to feel exclusive, and to know you were in the possession of something sublime. Luxury was a feeling. In the 80\u2019s when you opened the door to a Cadillac, you knew it was something opulent; it was fancy! Open the door to a Cadillac today and you\u2019ll see state-of-the-art technology, well appointed seating and amazing\u00a0gadgetry, but is it luxurious? That\u2019s debatable. Open the door to a well-appointed Mazda and you\u2019re quite likely to encounter the exact same environment. The \u201cluxury\u201d aesthetic has been replaced with sportiness, cheap plastics and nondescript interiors. I\u2019d press someone to definitively tell me the difference in materials. I would be willing to put money on that challenge.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not trying to romanticize the past, but I think businesses got the concept better then, than today. Think of luxury retail\u2026 It is all branding. Is there panache? No! It is just elevated, expensive and postulates the use of, arguably, high-quality materials. I recently read an article in Town & Country magazine about the new Polo Bar<\/a> in Manhattan. I think Ralph Lauren gets it, but he\u2019s also populated the space with his namesake, which appears a bit gimmicky to me. Of course, I will visit the destination on my next trip to New York City.<\/p>\n

When I think of luxury items, I want things that make me feel special and exclusive. Today\u2019s luxury market seems to be split in two. There\u2019s the bourgeois luxury; \u201cluxury living spaces,\u201d \u201cluxury cars,\u201d and \u201cluxury clothes.\u201d Think about what all that term encapsulates and it is a huge range of items. Then there are things that are in the stratosphere of luxury; art, custom clothiers, vacations, retreats; it is in this very high-end space where luxury prevails, but it is certainly outside of the reach of the masses. Perhaps that is why I have a problem with luxury, because what is truly luxurious is completely unattainable to me, whereas it once was.<\/p>\n

\"picture<\/a>
Mark Cross understood luxury.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m often confounded at what merchandisers, designers and architects\/builders call luxury. There are luxury apartments, luxury goods, luxury bath items, luxury home decor; the word is ubiquitous. Luxury was once used to describe things that were unique, extravagant and exquisitely comfortable. In my opinion, the word \u201cluxury\u201d has been hijacked. Marketers are only concerned with the term conveying affluence, not magnificence. There was a time when you bought a pair of Bruno Magli or Salvatore Ferragamo shoes, you knew you were buying something luxurious and exquisitely well-crafted, and that these items were something few could own. The automobile industry USED to know luxury very well. Cadillac, Lincoln and Mercedes all knew what luxury meant; to be pampered, to feel exclusive, and to know you were in the possession of something sublime. Luxury was a feeling. In the 80\u2019s when you opened the door to a Cadillac, you knew it was something opulent; it was fancy! Open the door to a Cadillac today and you\u2019ll see state-of-the-art technology, well appointed seating and amazing\u00a0gadgetry, but is it luxurious? That\u2019s debatable. Open the door to a well-appointed Mazda and you\u2019re quite likely to encounter the exact same environment. The \u201cluxury\u201d aesthetic has been replaced with sportiness, cheap plastics and nondescript interiors. I\u2019d press someone to definitively tell me the difference in materials. I would be willing to put money on that challenge. I\u2019m not trying to romanticize the past, but I think businesses got the concept better then, than today. Think of luxury retail\u2026 It is all branding. Is there panache? No! It is just elevated, expensive and postulates the use of, arguably, high-quality materials. I recently read an article in Town & Country magazine about the new Polo Bar in Manhattan. I think Ralph Lauren gets it, but he\u2019s also populated the space with his namesake, which appears a bit gimmicky to me. Of course, I will visit the destination on my next trip to New York City. When I think of luxury items, I want things that make me feel special and exclusive. Today\u2019s luxury market seems to be split in two. There\u2019s the bourgeois luxury; \u201cluxury living spaces,\u201d \u201cluxury cars,\u201d and \u201cluxury clothes.\u201d Think about what all that term encapsulates and it is a huge range of items. Then there are things that are in the stratosphere of luxury; art, custom clothiers, vacations, retreats; it is in this very high-end space where luxury prevails, but it is certainly outside of the reach of the masses. Perhaps that is why I have a problem with luxury, because what is truly luxurious is completely unattainable to me, whereas it once was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[145,144],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-luxury-goods","tag-luxury-living"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3082,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions\/3082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottballew.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}