How aspirations ring in for luxury brands

What lies at the core of luxe is a deep desire. What drives luxe is again a deep desire. In the course of branding or marketing luxury, what we actually do is brand and market desire. Desire, however, is tricky because, just like a human heart, it can swing both ways, taking luxe along with it, to both extremes. So like the age-old cassettes there are two sides of it – Side A and Side B.

Side A: This one will be the positive side, which leads to aspirations. This is the side that keeps the fire of aspirations burning in the human hearts and thus counters ringing for luxury brands. This is the desire that keeps you awake in the nights and makes you chase your dreams of dazzle.

Imagine this, you love fast cars and finally you have stretched your budget to acquire your dream car - a BMW Z4. You have fulfilled your desire to drive the meanest machine in town. While driving your brand new dream car, say on the fifth day, suddenly, a Ferrari 812 Superfast zips past you. As a car enthusiast, you are well aware of the model and you know it is priced way beyond your budget, even in foreseeable future, at over Rs 5 crore. And you are a practical woman. Till the time you had only seen its photograph and it was fine to go for Z4. But the moment you see it in front of your eyes, something changed. In no time, you realise that your desire has a sudden change of hearts. The Z4 has been removed from the throne of your dream car and replaced by 812 Superfast. You save a photograph of your new dream car on your phone so that you can inspire yourself everyday to own this new machine…as soon as possible.  

Thus desire helps you rise the ladder of luxury and so brand custodians or dream merchants are very quick to manipulate your desires so that they can achieve their targets. You need to understand that the dream merchants, while selling you the dream car will make sure that there is a practical picture painted so that in the quest of upgrading directly to 812 Superfast you don’t skip the intermediate step and not buy the Z4. They will make sure that they make you desire for both and also desire an upgrade immediately after you make the purchase. Thus desires in the positive form of aspirations fuel the luxury industry.  

Side B: Desire can also swing towards bottomless pits of hell and take luxury along with it. In my second book of The Luxe Trilogy, ‘Dark Luxe’, I have explored in details the second aspect of desire. This is the story of nightmares, about those realities that safely hide behind the veil of luxe. These are tales of fiction from the darkest, bottomless pits of hell.  

There are examples from life where luxury is made an accomplice to achieve the deepest and darkest desires. These are not aspirations, these are manifestations of the seven deadly sins and how desire makes luxe an integral part of it.  

Let me elaborate with a story from ‘Dark Luxe’. This is a story of a golden pair of scissors which the younger brother uses to kill the Maharaja so that he can take over the throne. The significance of this pair is that these are the sharpest pair made of pure gold and is historically used to severe the placenta, separating a new born from the mother. The caveat is that this ritual is meant only the first born, one who is entitled to the throne. Sheer jealousy and desire for the throne made the brother kill his brother with the same pair of scissors, which had given him his identity as the heir to the throne. Desire creates the darkest secrets, safely hidden in the corridors of power and luxury stays silent as a witness.   Thus branding desire is the elixir that a dream merchant aims to capture to brand the ultimate luxe.  

The writer is a luxury columnist and author of The Luxe Trilogy