Luxury is a desire engine. No one buys something luxurious – whether a product or a service – because it’s one of life’s essentials. They buy it because they yearn for it, because without the beautiful thing their world is incomplete. This means that luxury, by necessity, must be extraordinary: the best thing the human imagination can conjure, an alchemical blend of aesthetics, creativity and innovation that means it’s desirable not only in the purchaser’s eyes but everyone’s.
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars CEO, Chris Brownridge, captures this spirit when he says, “What we’re not trying to do is make more Rolls-Royces, but we are trying to make more remarkable motor cars…. We work with clients to create their own masterpieces.” Today’s customer is looking for a masterpiece, whether it’s a bottle of single malt whisky, a weekend in a country house hotel, a handbag or a motor car. The job of luxury is to deliver something distinctive, beautiful, desirable and remarkable all wrapped up in an enchanting story that makes the customer feel wonderful about buying it.
As I write, the market for luxury brands is more turbulent than it has been in 15 years. Luxury is built to last, and the brands that create it are hardwired for longevity and resilience. Yet strong as its fundamentals and long-term prospects are, the luxury industry is going through what Douglas Adams called “the long, dark teatime of the soul”. Businesses and consumers alike can seem discombobulated by our unpredictable world and to be working out how best to respond. In challenging times like these, I believe luxury should be the ideal antidote to the dis-ease of volatility and uncertainty that has dampened consumer confidence and deaccelerated luxury demand. In a world that often seems ugly, luxury offers beauty. In a world defined by disruption, it offers timelessness – a symbol of enduring creativity and human ingenuity. In a world that feels precarious, luxury is a reward, a reassurance, a celebration of the remarkable in human experience.
According to a recent report by Bain & Company, industry woes cannot all be laid at the door of geopolitical and global disruption – though, of course, that’s hardly a helpful context in which to operate – luxury itself has appeared to be losing momentum and appeal, something Michael Ward, Managing Director of Harrods and outgoing Chair of Walpole, noted at the Walpole British Luxury Summit 2025 when he said: “We had meteoric growth and [some] luxury brands became complacent.” Other luxury commentators have observed that there’s another distinction between the global luxury brands that have remained truly desirable and those that have faltered: insufficient creativity and innovation – an absence of the kind of considered, aesthetically alluring design Le Corbusier famously called “intelligence made visible”. This has led to luxury experiences overtaking luxury products, possibly because those experiences have been able to deliver that all-important pleasure-boosting emotional hit. More concerning for any leading luxury executives has been the reduction in engagement with luxury online: according to Bain & Company, “brand-related searches have been down for more than 40 per cent of international brands, social media follower growth has plummeted 90 per cent and engagement rates are off by 40 per cent”. Simply put, luxury’s desire engine has been misfiring.
Famous names have been quick to respond to this wake-up call, overhauling creative talent and reinvigorating brand management; this autumn alone, 12 of the world’s major labels will show off their new creative vision on the Milan and Paris runways. This urgency is crucial if the industry is to woo the potential 300 million new luxury customers to enter the market over the next five years. Bain & Company’s Claudia D’Arpizio notes, “across generations, drivers linked with self-reward, status, personal identity and the celebration of achievements will continue to drive engagement, reinforcing and building the lasting relevance of luxury within its consumers’ lives”. I’d put it a different way: it’s part of what makes us human to want the reward and beauty luxury goods and experiences offer, but they need to be sufficiently exquisite and remarkable if we’re to invest in them. Bring the joy, imbue it with creativity and meaning, and the customer will come.
British luxury, with its emphasis on exceptional craftsmanship and a clever, deft blend of utility and beauty, is in a particularly good place to lead the charge in reminding the world’s most discerning customers why luxury has meaning. In a market where some aspects of luxury may be considered to have lost their lustre, the UK’s luxury houses offer something rare: individuality, intimacy and ingenuity. From handmade shoes that carry the quiet confidence of skills honed over more than a century, to a dram of single malt distilled in the misty beauty of Speyside, the effortless ‘English gentleman’ poise bestowed by Savile Row tailoring skills or the kinetic thrill of a legendary British sports car, these are extraordinary experiences steeped in soul. Agile, entrepreneurial and often delightfully undiscovered in a time when the phone in your pocket seems to be a window on every tiny feature of the world, British luxury brands are masters of the meaningful, not the mass-produced. At a time when we need beauty, authenticity and creativity more than ever, Britain’s luxury brands are brilliantly placed to reignite luxury’s desire engine, one remarkable masterpiece at a time.
Illustration by Jo Ratcliffe
