Luxury is...

A friend of mine from Monaco was writing to me last week for some help. She's close to graduation, and when she will be presenting her Maters thesis, just like I have done one year before her, she will need to present her luxury portfolio. "What is that?" you'd probably wonder...the same question which I asked myself last year. There were no boundaries for us: it could have been a ppt, a movie, a newspaper,...whatever we felt would represent best our learnings and our perception of the industry,...or better said of what luxury means to us.

I always try to take a distance to the swipe-swipe-process of buying and buying overpriced objects for status reasons. Luxury has to be more than that! And IT IS!!! It has evolved to an industry, agreed, but the basics should remain the same: attention to detail, craftsmanship, talent, comfort, love, balance, harmony, time!!!

I met a person who was working in the luxury business, but will never in their life understand it. You could see it through the body language, that even though the suit was extremly expensive, it did not make him feel well as he did not know how to wear it. Nor did he know how to appreciate his food. He'd just swallow it down to the last bit: task accomplished! He will never know what the essence of the luxury industry means, the essence of luxury: feeling!

My conclusion in my portfolio was that it all comes down to the 5 senses. Of course you can go out and buy any watch you'd like, but doesn't it feel better when you hold the luxury watch in your hand and know that some many people have worked manually to get it done for you? Or sometimes just one person, which makes the item more precious, more personal. I adore some fast food every now and then, but knowing that your food has not just filling-qualities, but it can be also healthy and lifted to the level of art, so that it can be a pleasure for all your senses, doesn't it make it better to go for luxury?

Luxury can not be put on a "to-do-list", it can not be integrated in the process of faster and faster which our life is taking,...because it will only loose its significance.

Luxury is when the fast-forward business man stops for a second to hear his breath, when he stops to do one thing which makes him human: feel!



(Picture Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dusk_till_dawn_photography/4660958625/in/pool-highspeed/)