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Our series on the key shifts happening in everyday luxury continues with shifts 8 and 9:

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Everyday Luxury: Key Cultural Shifts 8 & 9

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From Guided & Expert-led to Self-led & Experimental

Dominantly, approaches to everyday luxury have focused on the importance of experts and specialists as guides, taking the privileged on a curated journey – through food and drink, fashion or travel.

Dominant examples:

AirBnb Experiences have become a popular pre-packed way for travellers to experience a new area through learning from expert locals.

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Murray’s Cheese Bar in New York offers tequila and cheese pairing evenings, giving consumers access to tequila and cheese experts to learn how to offer an alternative kind of food and drink experience.

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Emergently however, luxury seekers are encouraged to take on a more active role in creating their own experiences, taking part in the creative process, guiding themselves and taking control of outcomes.

Emergent examples:

Midas Touch Crafts offer DIY natural beauty workshops, increasingly popular with discerning consumers who want to learn a new skill and understand exactly what goes into their skincare.

The Ginstitute offers bespoke gin crafting workshops, helping consumers design their own gin.

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From Clean & Finished to Imperfect & In Flux

Dominantly, everyday luxury is often defined by perfection and flawlessness, from objects and spaces designed to precise specifications to glamorous celebrity icons – everything appears clean and complete.

Dominant examples:

Stella McCartney’s SS19 campaign revives an ultra-clean, perfected look – polished and flawless.

Charlotte Tilbury’s Airbrush Flawless foundation also aligns with a hyper-perfect, magazine-style glamour.

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More emergently, everyday luxury is associated with unfinished or transitory experiences, which feel more ‘real’ because they’re not frozen in time. Clean lines give way to confusion, transition and shifting forms.

Emergent examples:

High-end department store Selfridges removed products from windows over the summer, instead making reference to the artistic process by creating empty studio-like rooms and half-finished displays.

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Architects of Air created an inflatable architecture maze designed to spark wonder and let people ‘experience the phenomenon of light,’ with colors shifting as people move through it.

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Key Shifts in Everyday Luxury, parts 8 and 9: From Guided & Expert-led to Self-led & Experimental and From Clean & Finished to Imperfect & In Flux

We are a cultural insight and innovation consultancy.

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