Ask an average consumer what luxury fashion is, and they’ll likely respond with well-known brand names such as Gucci, Yves St. Laurent and Louis Vuitton. But what makes these brands luxury? Well, that question is a bit harder to answer and elicits a wider range of responses: quality, craftsmanship, high price, exclusive, made in France, made in Italy, heritage…and the list goes on. In fact, fashion luxury isn’t any one thing, and often lives more as a fluid concept in the abstract, than something that can be quantified or formalized.  However, if we shift the context from adjective to noun, we find some additional clarity. A luxury is something that a customer doesn’t need, but chooses to buy nonetheless, to enjoy and find pleasure in. And while that may no longer be purchasing fine silver that requires polishing, or cashmere that necessitates brushing (especially when we don’t have a wait staff to do these things for us anymore), it certainly can be applied to purchasing clothing that we don’t need, but want. This might be purchasing a $20 black tee at Zara to add to an overflowing closet, or buying a $750 black Balenciaga logo tee-shirt simply because we can afford it. The latter is certainly not defined by its quality, craftsmanship, exclusivity, etc.—rather it’s brand name and high price. And thus, it stands out as something a bit different than our traditional understanding of luxury fashion. Perhaps a more apt term for it is mass luxury, or even fast luxury, more connected to its fast fashion counterpart in terms of mass production and marketing, than not. And it’s an approach that is gaining traction, the more digitized and globalized we’ve become, and the more growth traditional luxury brands seek, especially in Asia. For the full transcript, visit: FCNewsBytes.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices