There is little to worry for [censored-green-s]. Japan sales are going up year after year, its brand is coveted and held in the highest esteem, no matter old or young. But there’s some risks on the horizon to think about: the ‘New Rich’, those self-made HNWIs, are using words like classic or safe choice to describe [censored-green-s]. Fading excitement today doesn’t bode well for the maison’s next 200 years. What are they after that they feel they’re not really getting?
Yuzu looked into them, their lives, their homes, the trinkets and experiences they covet, and how they are different from the classic codes of luxury. Partly in conversation with them, but mostly by analysing their frames of references they use to express their aspirations, what they find exciting – i.e. by understanding their culture of luxury – Yuzu came to know what they’re after.
Most of the strategic insight created from the knowledge gained is owned by [censored-green-s], not Yuzu. What can be said in broad cultural terms is that the culture of luxury is shifting: partly, this is about things you also find in TikTok hashtags: stealth wealth and quiet luxury. Nothing new there. The interesting bit is how these things are understood by the New Rich: for example, quiet luxury doesn’t actually have to be a quiet Loro Piana cashmere; there are fresher – and not so quiet – things out there, like streetwear collabos and edgier designs that enthral them: none of those things look like a 100,000 bucks classic luxury item, but they are.
Or experience over things – this one Yuzu didn’t find to really hold true: Pretty shiny things hold the same sway over a 25-year-old entrepreneur as they did for an Etruscan lady 3,000 years ago. It’s more about the right experience with things rather than experience over things.
Most interestingly, though, the cultural lens through which they look at and evaluate luxury is changing from their parents’ generation: just like their career which as founders often is synonymous with life, they naturally look at things through the lens of value. But most luxury brands don’t want to talk about something so demeaning as resell value and investment. A Birkin is supposed to be a life-style choice, not a leather bitcoin. So the real question then becomes one of how can [censored-green-s] talk about value, but in a poetic way that fits with its brand? How can it be stealth without necessarily being the drab quiet safe choice?
You want to be attractive to the New Rich? Just as luxury adopted its poetry for its classic consumers looking for the singular piece, today, it will need to adjust its prose to meet a new cohort of value seekers with a new mindset. There’s a new culture of luxury being born.
