I was recently invited to a “luxury” club opening in London. The guest list, I was assured, had been created with the precision of a Buckingham Palace garden party.
Which, if you’ve ever been to one, will tell you it was going to be two thousand people milling about under tents, queueing for tea and sandwiches.
Those garden parties are hideous, parish fêtes with footmen basically. You'll have more fun at a parish fête anyway and besides, the odd minor royal always rocks up at one every so often, don't they?
Is this what 'luxury' has become? Is it now as common as Labradors in the Home Counties?
The word adorns lipstick launches, supermarket wine, and, I’m not making this up, an Iceland range of frozen food.
Nothing says “rarefied indulgence” quite like a microwavable Chicken & Mushroom Pasta for £3.75, wedged between the potato waffles and a family pack of Findus Crispy Pancakes.
It’s a neat little cocktail of semantic satiation, say a word until it dissolves into nonsense, which then feeds straight into the dilution effect, because once everyone’s in on it, no one cares.
Make something as common as Range Rovers in Chelsea and it suddenly has less status than a Blue Peter badge.
Real luxury is about exclusivity, and exclusivity is rarely effortless, it’s faintly inconvenient, mildly humiliating, and usually overseen by Lottie, the spectacularly bored daughter of a random baron, who's only there because her trust fund hasn’t kicked in yet.
It involves waiting lists, closed doors, and the fear you’ve just tracked mud onto the Axminster.
It’s the whispered recommendation from a godparent, the unlisted number scribbled on the back of a menu, the sort of access that comes with a coat of arms, not a newsletter subscription.
Throw the gates open and the magic dies. The garden party turns into a street fair, the champagne becomes Prosecco, and before long your VIP tier is indistinguishable from Iceland’s Luxury shepherd’s pie.
If you have to advertise it, it’s not exclusive and if you have to label it, it's not luxury.
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PS. "Paul put a CTA at the bottom of every single one of your posts please, it's non-negotiable". So CTA.