Defining Luxury Properly

Some prominent branding specialists, as well as major news media and up-scale magazines, are constantly talking these days about what the 'Millenial consumer' is doing to the definition of luxury.

An opening statement in this declaration seems to be that 'the days of luxury being synonymous with wealth are over.'

Really? Really, Fortune Magazine? Do you believe this? No wonder all you guys are going to the wall or having your wings clipped 'bigly.'

'Luxury' is the unique place in the barren desert...

Today's branding specialists and marketing people all the same focus around some fairly standard and tradition concepts about what 'luxury' has meant down the centuries. The word itself is much older than most authorities generally say - the Romans had a word 'luxus' which meant excess and self-indulgence. Most present-day authorities like to mention that there was a Middle English word taken from Old French and which meant 'lust' or 'lechery,' the strong implication there being that it has its actual roots in a Western European pagan deity - 'Lugh.'

Modern marketeers make the mistake of adding the idea that today's idea of 'luxury' includes 'authentic craftsmanship.' Well the problem with this is that you can be an authentic craftsman of the synthesizing chemical laboratory but never will you duplicate the actual scent of an actual taif rose.

This is a real place, this is the Liwa Oasis in Abu Dhabi

No. Luxury is a personal thing - it identifies and defines the person as they truly are. It denotes a kind of self-indulgence but on a stratospheric level, not an Earth-bound, limited, needs-based level. And it certainly is about wealth.

The most intensely bespoke thing there is, is the personal individual ego and central consciousness of the particular individual human being. People are very complicated - they have broadly shared qualities and characteristic 'human' similarities, yet they are each completely unique. And uniqueness separates people, it doesn't bring them together. That is, it doesn't bring very large numbers together, but it creates categories and specializations that exist in hierarchies which ascend to the peaks where 'the best' of each category exists, either as a tiny capstone group-let, or even as a single person who defines the actual sole epitome; the perfect example.

This is luxury - all natural, the 'Liwa' from the Velvet Collection by Ali Al Jaberi
of Widian Corporation

'Luxury' means the best... But the best thing for you the individual, not 'the best thing' that might be shared with a whole lot of other people.