Yahoo Finance What does luxury mean to you in 2020?
On 15 July, I went for breakfast at The Wolseley. Always an exciting event, after 122 days of making my own breakfast, my kids’ breakfast and my dog’s breakfast, the prospect of eating eggs I hadn’t cooked, surrounded by faces that weren’t my own family’s, felt intoxicating. This is what lockdown does: renews our appreciation for the good times, recalibrating our responses to things we once took for granted. Eating out, seeing friends, buying shoes: you name it, we now appreciate it tenfold.
Exiting The Wolseley I decided to walk down Old Bond Street. In every store the sales assistants outnumbered the customers. Apart from at the Hermès store. It had a queue outside. When I turned into Regent Street, so, too, did the Apple store. These queues made me feel both optimistic and curious. With so many Londoners now working from home, of course demand for laptops and tablets would be sky high. But while Apple’s might be the best, they categorically weren’t the cheapest. And who in hell could afford a Hermès anything these days?
Living in London, we all know people whose incomes have been blissfully unaffected by Covid-19. Millionaires and billionaires walk among the skint and bankrupt every day, inured from the devastating effects of a pandemic that has brought so many to their knees. To ask what luxury means now is an extremely thorny question at a time when thousands of parents can’t afford to feed their children. True luxury is being able to live without worry, be it financial, mental or physical. Any other answer is misguided and misjudged.
That said, so is the notion that none of us will ever treat ourselves or our loved ones to anything fancy ever again. Our definition of luxury may have changed, but our desire for it remains. Starved of luxury for so long, our world has shrunk, our plans cancelled and our expenditure honed down to the essentials, when the time comes to reward ourselves for all this penury all the old clichés have never rung more true. Diamonds really are a girl’s best friend, because I’m worth it.
The cleverest players within the luxury market have reacted swiftly and imaginatively to our changing needs. Nothing illustrates this more wonderfully than Claridge’s, the 208-year-old institution that, in the height of lockdown, pivoted smartly and altruistically to offer its empty rooms and suites to key NHS workers, as well as providing food and daily packed meals.
That Claridge’s did not put out a press release, and that it disallowed interviews with staff and guests, was a classy move that endeared it to the public even more. ‘When this is over, I want to go there and spend my money with them,’ one of my friends said, neatly summing up the current mood. When people are in a better position to splurge once again, they will be more selective about what they splurge on, favouring brands, retailers and services that have shown themselves to have a social conscience.
By the same token every single person I’ve interviewed in recent months with even the loosest connection to fashion has expressed either a newfound or a heightened interest in sustainability. If we were mindful about our consumption before, the blight of Covid has only made us more worried about the state of the planet, and keen to buy goods and services with a positive social and environmental impact. Plastic might not be the first material one would associate with the former designer of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent — velvet, more like — yet ‘ethical luxury is the greatest luxury of all’, Tom Ford stated in September, announcing that he had designed the first high-end watch crafted from 100 per cent recycled ocean plastic. Speaking to me the day before the Burberry show, Riccardo Tisci was keen to emphasise the virtues of quality over quantity. ‘We need to slow down. We don’t need so much: it’s a case of less but better.’
Post-Covid, Tisci also believes that ‘people want a real identity now’, and that the copycat era is finished. Let’s hope this is true. If there’s one thing I’d put in my Fashion Room 101, it’s overpriced facsimiles of designer items flogged cynically by the high street. I would rather save for something individual and unique. So too, it seems, would the luxury customer. ‘Luxury is not a necessity but something that makes you dream a bit,’ says Alison Loehnis, president of Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter.
‘In terms of fashion, luxury is not about price but quality, and also an emotional connection. It could be the feel of exquisite fabric, the confidence that a beautifully cut piece gives you season after season or the pleasure in passing such a piece on to a son or daughter. Luxury is wholly subjective but no matter what, it should deliver joy.’ In addition to the expected upsurge in luxury loungewear — cashmere leggings, silk pyjamas and the like — Loehnis says the site has also seen an upsurge in bags. ‘We may not be attending events, but we still want to feel good doing the day-to-day. Our customers have also been seeking special investment pieces, watches and jewellery that hold real personal value for the long term.’
While I would love to treat myself to a Bottega Veneta Cassette (one brand that hasn’t been affected by Covid: sales grew 21 per cent year on year, the fastest growth reported by any luxury brand this quarter), the luxuries I’m most looking forward to in 2021 are things I wouldn’t even have deigned to call luxuries this time last year. Getting on a plane, turning right and not giving a stuff that I’m sitting in economy: it’s the destination that counts, not the seat pitch. Going to Glastonbury, even if it means camping in a muddy field: I would sleep in a Portaloo if it meant I were able to listen to live music again amid a crowd of 200,000 people.
If and when the day comes that I don’t have to watch my pennies, without doubt I’ll blow my budget on experiences: meals shared with friends, cocktails in my happy places, holidays with my family. I will also invest in my well-being. Yoga classes and the occasional massage aren’t luxuries when the alternatives are joint stiffness and skeletal pain.
For if there’s one thing the pandemic has taught us it’s that money spent on our wellness is the best investment of all. Hermès or holiday, diamond or de-stressing treatment, they’re all lavish when you consider that having enough money to treat yourself — to anything — is a luxury that not everyone can afford. Wealth and material possessions can wait: as long as I have health and happiness, I’ll consider myself to be living my best life.
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