The New Language of Luxury

In a quiet atelier off the Rue de Turenne, a man in a cotton smock hand-stitches the lining of a leather satchel. The room smells faintly of beeswax, with soft jazz humming from a corner radio. He doesn’t rush. Behind him, a single shelf of finished pieces gleams in late morning light - each one slightly different, because hands don’t copy perfectly.

We’ve entered an era where luxury no longer means what it once did. Not in the obvious ways, anyway. The logos have softened. The launches feel quieter. And instead of dazzling us with innovation, many of the most admired luxury houses are leaning back into something far older: craft.

Luxury once signified distance, something rare, remote, and resolutely out of reach. It was the penthouse, the private island, the impossible waitlist. But exclusivity today looks different. It’s not about being unattainable, but about being human, deliberate, and made with care.

Part of this shift is a reaction to abundance. When everything is available instantly, streamed, shipped, suggested, the truly rare thing becomes effort. AI has only accelerated this. It can design, generate, simulate. So now, what feels special isn’t what’s hard to access, but what’s hard to fake.

We’re surrounded by precision. Everything is optimised. But people are hungry for friction, for the unpredictable, the personal, the felt. That’s why luxury has turned inward. You can algorithm your way to a perfect anything these days, but what you can’t replicate (yet, thankfully) is feel. 

When everything can be predicted, luxury has to feel unrepeatable.

In my work, I’ve noticed that luxury brands, particularly the ones with heritage, have begun to speak less about status and more about process. The rare dye used in their silks. The fifth-generation weaver in Donegal. The single artisan who embroiders initials, imperfectly but beautifully, into a linen handkerchief. We’re no longer sold the dream of having; we’re being invited to admire the making.

Craft, of course, is slow. And slowness is the ultimate flex. But it’s more than that. It acknowledges that we’re tired of slick. Tired of perfect. We want to see the fingerprints.

So while AI is busy optimising for the masses, luxury is sidestepping the race entirely. Not because it can’t win at scale, but because it’s decided not to play. The new status symbol is not the object itself, but the story of the hands that made it.

And it’s working. We’ve started to look again…well at least I have!