From Indulgent to Ultimate: Luxury Beyond Our Wildest Dreams

Sophie Maxwell, Insight Director at Pearlfisher, sees luxury pushing the boundaries of imagination, possibilities and affordability to new extremes.

The idea of luxury is evolving. Going beyond a thing as straightforward as a latest model car, designer handbag, a Michelin star dinner for two, or the bliss of a luxury destination. Luxury today challenges the traditional concepts of craftsmanship, exclusivity and provenance and is altogether more ostentatious, extreme and extravagant.

Flying in the face of the new, underplayed, no-logo luxury movement, it is fuelled by the desire to push the luxury experience to its limit – money no object. It exemplifies status. Quintessentially founder, Ben Elliot agrees.

“We have […] noticed a massive increase globally in requests from members interested in mind-blowing, money-can’t-buy experiences. Now it seems you have to really get creative to do something your neighbour hasn’t,’ he said.

The Latest Boutiques: Céline, Chaumet & Elie Saab

The latest openings from Acne Studios, BMW, Vacheron Constantin and Balmain, in Copenhagen, Abu Dhabi, Macau and Hong Kong

According to preliminary data released from China’s National Bureau of Statistics, retail sales of consumer goods totalled RMB18.12 trillion (US$2.88 trillion) nationwide last year, up 17.1 per cent year-on-year (China Briefing). Most interestingly, their research highlighted the five fastest growing provinces – all of which had year on year growth in excess of 18.5% – as Yunnan, Hainan, Tianjin, Chongqing, and Shaanxi.

Yet reporting on The Latest Boutiques in Asia, it is somewhat shocking to realise that brands like Balmain, 3.1 Phillip Lim and Elie Saab, have only this year inaugurated their first locations in Hong Kong. As second, third and even fourth-tier cities grow at the fastest rates of consumption, and large luxury brands only begin to launch in top-tier cities, one wonders who and what will satiate this rampant appetite for consumption as brands scramble to cover the geographical enormity that is China.

The Top 50 Most-Searched for Luxury Brands in the United States

Digital Luxury Group and Luxury Society join forces to reveal the ranking of the top 50 most-searched for luxury brands on search engines in the United States in 2011

“This is actually the first time that such powerful, yet seemingly basic, information is being made available. The combination of Digital Luxury Group’s digital expertise and Luxury Society’s industry understanding and reach will finally make it possible to regularly inform luxury brand executives about the performance and attractiveness of their brands online in the US,” reveals Phillipe Barnet, Managing Director, Luxury Society.

Using DLG’s proprietary technology, DemandTracker™, the “US Top 50 Most-Searched Luxury Brands in 2011” tracks more than 470 million intentions expressed by American consumers using Google and Bing to search for luxury products and services related to 500 luxury brands from 6 different segments.

Middle East Meets West: Lama el Moatassem, Toujouri

Lama el Moatassem, creative director of Toujouri, looks both east & west to fuse Middle Eastern aesthetics with the manufacturing nous and technologies of Europe & Asia

“I think luxury will always be associated with heritage and having been around for a long time,” explains Lama el Moatassem, creative director of demi-couture label Toujouri. “The biggest challenge for me has been gaining that level of credibility and getting people to understand that we are doing things right. I started Toujouri when I was 24 – you can imagine the reactions – the constant question was what do you know about luxury?”

Lama remained unfazed and went on to launch Toujouri’s first collection in September 2009, after completing studies at London’s Central St Martin, London College of Fashion and working for Chloé and Matthew Williamson. The collection drew heavily on the designer’s Qatari and Pakistani heritage, but launched in Paris at the Vendôme Luxury Tradeshow. An international luxury brand from day one.

The Latest Digital: Gucci, Estée Lauder & Stella McCartney

Just months into 2012, both luxury brands & consumers show a commitment to integrating technologies and building connections between online & offline communications

When we took stock of the digital luxury realm in 2011 and mused about what could eventuate in the coming twelve months, our experts believed that brands would begin to move away from experimenting with one platform at a time and instead seek to integrate communications across multiple channels.

The current toast of digital integration is undoubtedly Pinterest, an image-based social network that allows users to organise and share things they discover on the Internet. The self-described Virtual Pinboard facilitates sharing from basically anything on the web, without the technical limitations of using single-system platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Wordpress or Twitter. Users are invited to discover those with similar tastes and better navigate the information-overloaded super highway.

Luxury's Mixed Messages in a Yo-Yo Economy

Susan Kime, luxury columnist for JustLuxe.com, investigates how macroeconomic conditions are affecting consumer attitudes towards luxury spending in the United States

Back in October 2011, research suggested that young millionaire populations were still spending enthusiastically, despite the sombre economy. That was then, this is now, and now looks more divergent and more somber. The Luxury Institute just published its January 2012 report, and it defines an end of year 2011 as a complex picture, and intuits that such complexity is not leaving anytime soon.

Tiffany & Co. was a prime example of the high end brand’s complex issue. On the one hand, in the U.S., Tiffany had a 1% decrease in holiday sales at the jeweler’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York. Also, Tiffany’s same-store sales for November and December fell 4% in Europe and rose an anemic 2% in the Americas. But the other hand, sales rose 6% in Japan and a brisk 18% pace in the Asia-Pacific region, which includes China.