Knowledge gives products value, and creates a divide between those in the know and those who neither have this Chanel jacket nor know that Vanessa Paradis wore it.

The goal is to avoid the middle ground, which is the worst of both worlds. This is the realm of brand names, where price starts to decouple from quality. I’ll happily spend $60 on a shirt made of merino wool, and I’ll happily pay $6 for a cotton tee. But I’m never going to pay $30 for a cotton tee, because it’s not going to last me 5x longer than t

According to Kapferer, “luxury is superlative, not comparative”. The beauty of luxury is that no one can definitively say whether a Louis Vuitton bag is better than an Hermes bag because that concept doesn’t even make sense

A decade or so ago, brands shifted from increasing value of their products through utility, competitive comparison, and creative advertising to endowing products they made with aesthetic, sustainability credentials, a story of artisanship and provenance, and/or a community in order to give their products identity and singularity. (Virgil Abloh made