Reflections on Luxury

and a video on why the simplest luxuries might matter most

I attended a breakfast talk last week given by John Gerhardt, Global Creative Director at Moët Hennessy (LVMH). His topic was “the nine rules of luxury,” which he kicked off by showing a video of several people of a stylish persuasion answering the question, “What is luxury?”

As you might expect, definitions were all over the map. I can’t remember what they were exactly, but let’s just say they spanned a gamut as wide-ranging as Iranian caviar in a palace to beer from a can in a canoe, and being lucky enough to live in a politically stable country to having enough time to exercise in the morning. Very tricky to nail down what such apparently divergent things might have in common, which was the task John had set for himself.

As an experiment, just try asking yourself what you think luxury is and you’ll see how tricky it is to make a list of things that feel like they belong in the same category. I’ll go first:

1.     Peace and quiet (if there’s a land without leaf blowers, take me there!)

2.     Good tailoring (most articles of clothing sold in this world have all the silhouette of a pup tent in a monsoon)

3.     Organically grown vegetables pulled from the Earth just before hitting the table

I suppose the common denominator in that short list is that each luxury is rare, which indeed was one of John’s nine rules. But this particular rule is also one I get stuck on, because why then do things like tubes of Chanel lipstick and bottles of Veuve Clicquot count when you can buy them in practically every airport on Earth?