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I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.
I recently published my seventy-fifth article for Haute Impact (“And all this to save what, exactly?”) and thought it might be time to take a look back—a little bit at what I’ve learned along the way, but more about the themes that have emerged and especially the key advice I’ve passed along. If someone asked me to summarize what they’d learn if they read all of my articles to date, what would I say?
Emergent themes
When I was planning this newsletter, I thought I’d write about the intersection of luxury, technology, and sustainability. That’s still my tagline and I’m not planning on changing it anytime soon. But when I plan articles, I rarely think, “I need to find topics that fit into my stated themes”. Instead, I write about what I find interesting at any given moment.
With that in mind, I fed my entire output to ChatGPT and asked it to conduct a thematic analysis. If you did thematic analysis in a sociology or related class, you’ll know it can be tedious and it’s easy to introduce biases. Using a large language model (LLM) for thematic analysis is one of my favorite uses of generative AI. It doesn’t get bored, and I was curious whether it would spot patterns that I’d miss. These are the ten themes the model identified (all words except for article titles from ChatGPT):
What justifies the luxury premium? Luxury can justify its price through craftsmanship, performance, beauty, service, or emotional satisfaction, provided buyers understand what they’re paying for. “Luxury skincare products: what are you paying for?”, “Approachable luxury, applied”, and “The luxury test you may not want to take”.
Identity, recognition, and design. Luxury objects communicate taste, belonging, and status to different audiences, whether through conspicuous branding or subtle design. “How recognizable should a luxury tote be?”, “Field Notes: When design becomes the logo”, and “The market for emptiness”.
Everyday functionality. Luxury should remain useful, comfortable, and reliable when it leaves the boutique and enters ordinary life. “Louis, mon ami, you have a problem”, “Fear of flying”, and “Field Notes: Why are minimalist wallets so thick?”
Trust, evidence, and accountability. Luxury brands should substantiate their promises with evidence and accept responsibility for their products, practices, and supply chains. “The luxury of not knowing”, “Field Notes: Don’t just buy the story”, and “Observations: When honesty isn’t enough”.
Consumer agency and desire. Understanding the forces that shape desire helps consumers choose purchases that remain satisfying after urgency and novelty fade. “Can you love luxury without being owned by it?”, “Can you ever be immune to luxury?”, and “Can mindfulness make you a better luxury consumer?”
Durability and ownership. Lasting luxury depends on repairability, continued usefulness, and the care and affection that accumulate through ownership. “Your last luxury purchase”, “Granting an afterlife to luxury”, and “What makes something worth handing down?”
Service and human connection. Exceptional luxury service creates value through personal attention, dignity, learning, and relief from the burden of managing details. “What is the true nature of luxury service?”, “What only humans can touch”, and “Is the flagship boutique always your best choice?”
Approachable luxury. Lower prices can preserve meaningful luxury qualities when buyers understand which costs, benefits, and experiences have been removed. “What is ‘approachable luxury’?”, “Approachable luxury, applied”, and “Field Notes: Can quiet luxury be approachable?”
Ethical and environmental responsibility. The pleasure of luxury deserves scrutiny against the treatment of workers and animals and the environmental consequences of production and consumption. “And all this to save what, exactly?”, “Is fur ethical? Can it be?”, and “The net-zero diamond”.
Technology and luxury. Technology strengthens luxury when it improves experience and longevity, but weakens it when it introduces obsolescence, undermines trust, or diminishes valued human contributions. “Is this the future of the watch industry?”, “Field Notes: When fashion gets smartphones wrong”, and “What AI can’t touch”.
To me, one of the most interesting aspects of this list is how far it extends beyond my planned themes of sustainability and technology. It also includes justification, identity, functionality, trust, agency, durability, service, and approachability.
I don’t plan on consciously changing my approach, but it’ll be interesting to see if these themes change after another 75 articles or more.
Advice for readers
Next, I asked ChatGPT to identify what it saw as the most useful instances of advice I’ve offered to readers. Again, this is a great use of an LLM. I’m too close to the material to see all its patterns, so I was curious what it would pick out. This is the model’s list of ten of my pieces of advice to date that it considered useful:
Look beyond the wanting. “Will having this item be pleasing after the wanting has done its work and convinced me to buy it?” “Can you love luxury without being owned by it?”
Define affordability before entering the boutique. “Is it an item you can afford? Now? Not by dipping into savings, and definitely not by going into debt, but out of the amount you’ve budgeted for indulgences like this?” “Field Notes: Your first luxury purchase”.
Understand the tradeoffs behind a lower price. “What remains luxurious? What becomes cheaper? What are the consequences?” “Approachable luxury, applied”.
Test how much recognition matters. “If you couldn’t post about, mention to friends, or even be seen with the item, would you still buy it? How much is social approval worth to you?” “The luxury test you may not want to take”.
Imagine owning the worn version. “The next time you’re in a luxury boutique, and considering purchasing something, ask yourself whether you’re comfortable owning the version of it that will exist five years from now—not the perfect item in the boutique, but the one with the dents, creases, stains, pills, or scratches.” “The first dent is the hardest”.
Choose the shopping experience over the address. “Visit the flagship if the flagship itself interests you. Choose your shopping boutique based on the experience.” “Is the flagship boutique always your best choice?”
Examine incentives behind recommendations. “When a financial relationship exists, ask yourself what the person stands to gain, whether the supporting evidence can be checked, and whether there’s corroboration from someone without the same interest.” “Observations: When honesty isn’t enough”.
Reward transparency rather than reassurance. “We can stop treating vague assurances as evidence. When one maison tells us exactly who its suppliers are, what its audits found, and what it did in response, while another gives us only flowery language about craftsmanship and ethics, that difference should matter.” “The luxury of not knowing”.
Verify consequential AI findings. “If something would materially affect your decision, open the source and check it yourself.” “Field Notes: Don’t just buy the story”.
Ask what makes an heirloom maintainable. “If you’re buying any watch as an heirloom, insist that your manufacturer make explicit commitments” to service and parts availability. “Is this the future of the watch industry?”
What I’ve learned along the way
For the voice of this newsletter, my goal is to stay on a fine line where my personal voice comes through, but I keep my personal life out of it. In other words, I want my readers to know that I have my own perspective, but I assume they don’t care about my latest luxury purchases or other adventures, except to the extent that they lead to some sort of deeper insight. This is, therefore, a bit of a departure that I hope you’ll indulge.
One can discover luxury by writing about it
Joan Didion wrote about discovering what she thought through writing. I’ve also found that writing about a thing—and wanting what I write to be interesting and accurate—is a great way to learn about it. When I started, I knew little about luxury skincare products, net-zero diamonds, luxury denim jackets, the ethics of fur, the Japanese concept of emptiness, and dozens of other subjects.
My hope is that as a reader, you have the sense of being on a journey with me—a journey to better understand the world of luxury, to make better luxury choices, and to insist that maisons de luxe do better.
Knowing how desire works doesn’t make one immune to it
I’ve written on multiple occasions about desire and how it shapes our luxury purchases—and how maisons de luxe set out to increase it, to make the things they sell irresistible. I myself wrote an article about what Buddhism can teach us about desire and not mistaking our purchases for happiness, then days later went shopping and found myself pulled by the same desires I had just written about.
I believe in personal responsibility, including what we buy and how much we spend. I also believe that maisons de luxe—and especially maisons de grand luxe—are worth billions (or tens, or hundreds for the conglomerates) of dollars or euros in part because they’ve become extremely skilled at hacking our neurobiology and neutralizing (or at least minimizing) our usual checks and balances when it comes to extravagant purchases. One of the things I’ve learned along the way is to resolve to keep this in mind as I shop.
Showing up twice a week
When I started Haute Impact, I committed to two articles a week, every Wednesday and Saturday at 5:00 AM US Pacific Time.
Sometimes I think that was crazy. My feature articles generally run 1,500–2,500 words, and my Field Notes (and now Observations) 600–800. I may have underestimated the work required to produce 2,100–3,300 words per week of original content. No more. I’m keenly aware of just how much work that is and how relentless those deadlines are.
Other times, though, I think it was the smartest decision I could have made. There’s a YouTube channel I follow that covers tourism in Paris specifically and France generally. I complain about aspects of their videos, and yet I’ve watched them for years. Why? Because they’re covering a place I care about, because I learn something new from every episode, and because they’ve posted consistently at the same time every Saturday for as long as I’ve been watching them. Complain as I may, the fact is that I’d miss them if I woke up on Saturday and didn’t find their latest video waiting.
So that possibly crazy commitment to two articles a week? It forces me into a consistency that I almost certainly wouldn’t keep to otherwise. And my hope is that for at least some of you, you’d miss me if you looked at your email and didn’t see my latest issue on schedule.
And finally…
There’s one more piece of advice pulled from an article that I want to leave you with as a closing note:
Leave room for joy. “I hope you don’t use this list to talk yourself out of joy you can afford and genuinely want.” “The luxury test you may not want to take”.
Be thoughtful, yes. But leave room for joy.
