Are we witnessing the death of aspiration in luxury?
Luxury Academy Newsletter
There’s a word luxury brands have been using for so long it’s become essentially invisible. Aspiration.
The whole industry runs on it, or thinks it does. Buy this and you’ll be seen as the kind of person who owns expensive things.
But something’s shifted with younger affluent clients, particularly the Gen-Z lot spending serious money. The social engine has gone rather quiet. They’re not buying things to be seen. They’re barely even mentioning other people when they describe why they bought something.
What you hear instead is language that’s entirely internal. “I just needed something beautiful.” “It made me feel calm.” “I wanted something that felt mine.”
It’s called hedonic self-regulation, using consumption to modulate your own emotional state rather than to communicate anything to anyone else. The audience for the purchase has moved from external to entirely internal.
If your buyer isn’t trying to signal anything to anyone, then all the language of exclusivity and “joining an elite world” is rather missing the point.
See you next week
Paul