In Midnight in Paris, a movie overflowing with wonderful dialogue, one of many memorable lines comes at the end of this exchange over a pair of chairs in a Paris antique store between the screenwriter Gil, his insufferable fiancée Inez, and her entitled mother Helen:
Helen: Come look at these, Inez. Wouldn’t these be charming in a Malibu beach house? Combien, Monsieur?
Vendeur: Dix-huit mille.
Helen: Merci.
Inez: What is that?
Helen: They’re a steal at eighteen thousand dollars.
Gil: Eighteen thousand dollars for this?
Helen: Oh, wait, it’s euros, so it’s more.
Inez: So that’s like twenty, twenty thousand.
Gil: Even more, I think, yeah.
Helen: I know, but it’s very hard to find anything like this at home.
Inez: She’s right, Gil.
Gil: Yeah, but remember, we haven’t even found a house yet. We’re trying to keep expenses down so I don’t have to take any crummy rewrite jobs.
Helen: Well, you get what you pay for. Cheap is cheap.
“Cheap is cheap.”
But is it?
Image: Sony Pictures Classics
Changing the product or business model
Loro Piana’s least expensive men’s long coat in natural fibers, the Traveller Field Jacket, will set you back $6,020 (4 950 €). But Pini Parma’s most expensive jacket, the Light Taupe Mink Collar Coat, is $2,445 (1 450 €) and is made in Italy from Loro Piana Capolavoro wool with a mink accent. Is that “cheap”? Or is it a different business model that enables Pini Parma to sell clothing made in the same country, from material by the same manufacturer, at a fraction of the price?
Images: Loro Piana, Pini Parma
A limited-availability Hermès bag—say, a Kelly or a Birkin—will typically start above $10,000 (8 411 €). But you can walk into an Hermès boutique and buy a bottle of eau de cologne for $120 (93 €). Is that “cheap”? Or is it Hermès making use of the mass production-friendly nature of fragrance—in contrast with the artisanal, handmade nature of their bags—to offer virtually anyone who walks in their store the ability to walk out with something that reflects the brand?
Images: Revolve, Hermès
So what exactly is approachable luxury? There’s no widely accepted definition, but let’s set down a marker so we have something to work with:
Approachable luxury is value created by reducing one or more barriers to entry (price, availability, others) while preserving one or more luxury attributes (materials, artisanship, design, heritage, others).
Buyer beware, though: if the only luxury attribute preserved is the logo, it’s not approachable luxury, it’s a form of logowashing.
Whatever you call it, it’s on the rise
“Approachable luxury”, “affordable luxury”, “aspirational luxury”, “accessible luxury”: whatever you call it, it seems to be growing in popularity.
Quoted in Vogue Business in 2024, industry analyst Aneesha Sherman noted that luxury prices were up 40–50% since COVID-19, then went on to say, in the context of handbags:
It’s created a pocket in the middle zone where, if you want to spend somewhere between $500 to $1,000, you’re priced out of these high luxury brands. But your willingness to pay is far above the $100 to $200 range. You’re looking for something in between: the supply has grown to serve the demand.
In other words, as the top-tier luxury brands continue to raise prices, this leaves a donut hole in the middle of the market for high-quality goods. These goods may have many or all of the best qualities of their household name counterparts, save the household name. And in some cases, they’re extremely popular. I’ve never not seen a line at a Polène boutique in Paris. I can think of plenty of high-end luxury brands that haven’t experienced that kind of demand in decades.
But it’s not just companies like Polène, Pini Parma, or STOW London (to name just three) selling high quality goods at fractions of the price of comparable items from established luxury firms; those same luxury firms themselves are getting in on the action, as in the Hermès example above. In 2002, The Boston Consulting Group called this masstige (mass market + prestige), or, in their words, “affordable versions of superpremium goods”. Masstige allows luxury brands to sell the logo while protecting the scarcity and price of their mainline offerings. Masstige explains why Louis Vuitton is paying Dame Pat McGrath (presumably seven figures annually) to serve as creative director for la Beauté, the line of cosmetics they launched last year.
Pathways to approachability
How does an approachable product reach the market? There are at least four main pathways:
Impulse-level purchase from a luxury maison. Think of fragrances and/or beauty supplies from DIOR, Hermès, LOEWE, Louis Vuitton, and other luxury manufacturers. The firms want to give anyone who walks into their boutiques the ability to walk out with a purchase. Also, many such firms (with the notable exception of Louis Vuitton) see this as an opportunity to broaden their distribution into cosmetics and fragrance departments of high-end department stores, duty-free shops, and other locations without damaging the exclusivity of their core products.
Entry-level model from a luxury manufacturer. Think of luxury auto manufacturers offering smaller, less-featured models like the Audi A3, the BMW X1, or the Mercedes GLA. For customers thinking about their first luxury purchase, these manufacturers want to offer them an entry point into the brand. S&P Global Mobility defines first-time auto brand buyers as nomads, those who buy from the same brand twice in a row as loyalists, and people buying three times or more in a row from the same brand as super-loyalists. If the ultimate goal is to create super-loyalists, it follows that they must start by creating nomads—and the earlier in life, the better. That means lower prices, which means manufacturers must lower their costs.
Lower-end sibling brand. A classic example of approachable sibling brands is Rolex and Tudor. Rolex created Tudor as a subsidiary to create an entry-level alternative within their family. Another example is The Brady Bunch of luxury siblings, the Armani hierarchy of Armani Privé → Giorgio Armani → Emporio Armani → A|X Armani Exchange. Armani varies price, accessibility, materials, provenance, and more across their family of brands, with the result being that almost anyone can wear Armani. A midi dress might cost $100 (84 €) at A|X, $1,500 (1 260 €) at Giorgio Armani, and $30,000 (25 200 €) or more from Armani Privé.
Reduced cost structure. Marketing is expensive. DIOR is rumored to pay Charlize Theron $5 million (4,2 million €) per year; Rolex is rumored to have an $8 million (6,7 million €) per year deal with Roger Federer. Retail space is expensive as well—above all, the cathedrals to luxury that are the flagship boutiques of the major luxury brands. These spaces and the experiences they offer are expensive to maintain and operate. All these expenditures are necessary, though, to the brand image, which leads to the psychology of luxury retail, and why we pay more for certain brands. If, though, you are an up-and-coming luxury manufacturer without these costs, you can choose to charge your customers less for comparable goods while maintaining your profit margin.
When I continue this story next week, I’ll propose a framework for thinking about approachable luxury, including three simple questions you can ask to determine if something approachable is also a good value.
In the meantime…
Questions for you
How much more would you (or do you) pay for the flagship-style luxury boutique experience?
If you could buy the exact same item as something you like from your favorite luxury maison—at half the price but with no logo—would you?
