Jean-Claude Biver with Hublot friend Usain Bolt
The luxury industry needs to adapt to the biggest generational change in retail history. How" By going back to the future, says our columnist Jean-Claude Biver
Jean-Claude Biver
Two, three, or five hundred years ago, luxury was a real experience. Luxury, when it originated, involved people who would come to your home; and you would end up buying from them. The store would come to you. You still have this in Japan, where retailers send representatives to the homes of extremely wealthy people, making luxury a real experience. When someone comes into your home with their collection you can have your wife and your kids there. It?s a totally different experience.
When you are in a shop, you have other customers around you; there?s no privacy, and it?s noisy. Luxury was treated that way in the past, then it became a more marketed product, more accessible; and somehow we lost the origin of the experience. Follow LUX on Instagram: the.official.lux.magazine
And nowadays, as we have a lot of accessible luxury, people are rediscovering inaccessible luxury, which is the luxury that is very individualised when you have a lot of unique pieces only for you and your taste. People are going ?back to the future? to this experience; it is a very old way to treat luxury, which was forgotten in the crazy years of the 1980s and 1990s to the 2000s. And now it is coming back, also for the younger generation. Because when they buy luxury they wan...