Luxury Studies: The In Pursuit of Luxury Journal - Current Issue

Scholars and practitioners say that over 90 per cent of 30,000 product launches fail each year due to incorrect segmentation. Moreover, as mainstream luxury brands become bigger and more global than ever, as they enter various product categories, communicate to wider audiences than before, they may begin to lose the ability to go beyond demographic segmentation and apply psychographic segmentation. Consequently, they lose the capability to personalize their communications and relations with different customer segments as opposed to treating them all as mere statistical units. The inability to distinguish between various segments of luxury clientele also derives from the weak segmentation and profiling skills of communication professionals, market researchers, economists, strategists, entrepreneurs, etc. However, a minority of luxury industry insiders are still aware how psychographic segmentation, profiling, targeting and positioning is the sine qua non for hyper-personalization. This article strictly focuses on non-digital authentic psychographics that has nothing to do with the so-called digital psychographics that may track and profile users, invade their privacy, collect big data, build manipulative algorithms and so forth. This article explains how actual, and not virtual, psychographics is the industry insiders’ secret key to not only competitive advantage and lasting profitability but also to true luxury.

Although there is quite the promise of the proto-1890s dandy in James Tissot’s portrait of a reclining Colonel Frederick Burnaby (1842–85) of 1870, the particular qualities of the 1890s make it a very much self-contained decade and one that is often viewed as anomalous to the rigidly conformist other decades of Queen Victoria’s long reign. It introduced personal freedoms that defied strict convention and in this sense is anticipatory of those decades of comparable freedom and self-expression: the 1920s, then the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. Crucial to the 1890s is a discovery of realism in literature and painting and therefore a decisive break with mid-Victorian sentimentality and the withdrawing-room potboiler. A decade evoked by the colours black and mauve, the aim of this article is to understand how rarefied dandies and aesthetes lived their lives during the 1890s in terms of architecture they inhabited; decoration within; how they dressed, ate and perfumed set to a backdrop of gas-lit nightlife, sumptuous Proustian interiors, evening dress canes, smoking jackets and gin palaces. The dandy by his very nature would be drawn to the most refined luxuries of the period, procuring or deriving the very best from the above lifestyle categories. Although the antecedents of today’s luxury consumption can be found in eighteenth-century retail, specialism in the above areas would have been much more developed by the 1890s with highly specialized retail outlets and also the immediate model for twentieth-century mega-hotels (as in by 1897 The Waldorf-Astoria, New York had 1000 rooms, large by even today’s standards). The dandy probably never had it so good post-the 1890s. This was their decade.

The luxury menswear industry is one of the growing areas of the fashion business in an albeit saturated marketplace. Luxury menswear brands are evolving as they endeavour to remain relevant and at the top of the fashion pyramid. To continue growth, many luxury brand groups have expanded across product areas. These include automobiles, jewellery, luxury hotels, fragrances and yachts, as well as clothing. To get even greater attention, the luxury menswear brands have recently reviewed their marketing campaigns with bolder approaches including experiences on global cultural sites and dabbled with the metaverse. However, with this foray into virtual technologies maintaining a high level of craft quality within all products is essential for continuity. This is a theoretical positional article that discusses what are the challenges facing the luxury sector such as global developments, local policies and social issues that affect the luxury menswear industry. The article emphasizes that craft skills are still very much at the forefront to create the type of products needed to meet the luxury market demand and business needs of the future. This qualitative study highlights that a large percentage of luxury menswear is now being purchased by a Generation Z brand consumer who puts pressure on luxury brands to incorporate their values. It considers the problems in maintaining craft skills, bespoke and why they are key to enhance luxury menswear provenance and stop it becoming bland, monotonous and mass-produced.

This article explores the high-end audio sector, elucidating its attributes and audiophiles’ attitudes. It ventures into the contemporary luxury landscape, aiming to furnish ideas for focused, in-depth investigations. Employing sociological and historical analyses, the study first delineates key conceptual issues in high-end audio analysis, setting a foundation for exploring audiophiles’ consumption motivations and attitudes. Subsequently, it examines the modern luxury market of high-end audio from varied perspectives, intending to characterize today’s luxury scene. Predicated on the analysis of sixteen in-depth interviews, the complexity of the market is revealed. The article concludes by suggesting avenues for future research.