Lifestyle
What does luxury even mean today? Four fashion insiders weigh in
This story is part of Image’s October Luxury issue, exploring what luxury really means to artists, designers, aestheticians, architects and more.
In the 2005 Chanel miniseries “Signé Chanel,” French filmmaker Loïc Prigent offers an unprecedented inside look at the storied luxury fashion house. In one scene, the film ventures to a farm in rural Paris, home to an elderly woman who, utilizing a handmade loom, was the only one capable of weaving the trim on Chanel jackets at the time. According to the documentary, Chanel sent interns and seamstresses to the farm in many failed attempts to master the woman’s technique — but only her hands were capable of such finesse. This scene comes to mind for Steff Yotka, newly appointed Global Editorial Director for I-D magazine and former head of content at luxury e-commerce platform Ssense (and also my former colleague), when I asked her about the evolution of luxury fashion. “It’s luxurious because every jacket is a piece of art,” says Yotka.
In the nearly 20 years since Prigent’s Chanel documentary, we’ve entered a totally new luxury landscape. Luxury e-commerce retailers are battling it out — when news broke in March of this year of London retailer Matches closing, its offloaded merchandise from brands like Dries Van Noten and Rick Owens found its way to Walmart marketplace to the surprise (and outrage) of some. Economic uncertainty and inflation have forced luxury’s behemoth parent companies like LVMH and Kering into a juggling act of new creative directors, international expansion, price hikes and excess inventory, while resale sites make maintaining product exclusivity and legitimacy a tough task.
Bottega Veneta Liberta bag in burgundy.
In a saturated market, it’s easy to feel like the days of bespoke craftsmanship and artistry as depicted in Prigent’s film are behind us, replaced with expensive graphic tees, sneakers and more products than we can consume. Once strictly reserved for high-fashion houses and the uber-rich, luxury fashion is more culturally ubiquitous and accessible than ever via social media and resale platforms like the RealReal, Poshmark, eBay, Grailed and Depop. The term “luxury” is actually just as subjective as it is sentimental, and despite economic instability, luxury fashion is simply everywhere today.
Fall/winter 2024 finds us (yes, still) firmly in the “quiet luxury” era, as defined by brands like Khaite, Bottega Veneta and the Row. It got me thinking: What does the word “luxury” even mean? This may seem like a silly question, but at a time of skyrocketing prices, market saturation, widening class disparity, climate change and international tumult, it left me wondering how those within the fashion industry relate to the concept of luxury on a personal level. Does it still sparkle and shine? How does it fit into their daily lives? What does it represent? How do they metabolize the luxury trend cycle?
Beneath the surface, luxury’s long-standing appeal is often about a sense of belonging. Yotka recalls her first luxury fashion purchase: a Spring 2004 Marc by Marc Jacobs T-shirt that she got at the opening of the Bloomingdales in SoHo. “It felt so luxurious because at that time in fashion it was really Marc Jacobs’ world,” she says. “To me, that T-shirt symbolized a whole universe that I wanted to be a part of. Whether it cost $5 or $500, it still would have felt like a luxury.”
For Guillermo Andrade, founder and designer of cult L.A.-based menswear label 424, a professional player’s edition of soccer cleats was the first item that shaped his personal definition of luxury. “They looked the same as everyone else’s cleats, but they smelled different and when you put them on you felt different,” says Andrade. “They were the first thing I considered to be a luxury, because I didn’t actually need that model of cleat to play soccer, but they were the ones I desired and wanted,” he continues. “To me, that’s the difference between mainstream consumer goods versus luxury goods. The cleats signified something that I wanted to be a part of.”
On an aesthetic level, while logos used to reign, the luxury labels that best capture the zeitgeist today are mastering a more subdued — but, importantly, not boring — design POV informed by personal style. “I think the period that we’re in now is about finding the beauty in everyday things,” says Yotka. “You see it at the Row with the most beautiful trench coat, cashmere sweater or ballet flat. You don’t want to change your whole life or become a different person every day, you want to be a slightly more put-together and fabulous version of who you already are.”
Bottega Veneta Hop bag in black.
This fine-tuned, everyday uniform approach appeals to Daniel Pacitti, curator with vintage shop 194 Los Angeles and co-founder of the made-in-USA clothing label Cease. “I don’t buy things very often anymore, I think we all buy too much,” says Pacitti. “But I made a new friend in Tokyo recently who has a brand called A.PRESSE, and I bought a hoodie from him. The fit and wash technique is great, and that to me is more luxurious than a Louis Vuitton hoodie.”
Quality still makes a luxury purchase worth it for many, but with so much shopping taking place online, it takes more vigilance to discern a well-made garment. “Nothing is worse than a kid saving up their money to buy something like I did when I was 15, and then getting home and looking in the mirror and it’s a massive letdown,” says Andrade. “I respect people’s money so much, the last thing I want is that ‘Why did I buy this’ feeling.”
Mina Alyeshmerni, founder of L.A. shop Maimoun — a store that supports emerging designers like SC103, J.Kim and Super Yaya — agrees. “I think luxury is meant to make your life easier, less stressful,” says Alyeshmerni. “I don’t typically associate [luxury] with material things, since I feel strongly that something that is well made and will last you years should be within reach.”
Working in fashion can be especially illuminating, even sobering. “I’ve learned that a lot of luxury isn’t actually luxury,” says Pacitti. “When you learn about manufacturing, you realize that most of it is made at the same place, at the same factory and with the same fabrics, but luxury doesn’t have to be something that’s expensive. I’ve been to places like India where you’ll find someone on the side of the road hand-stitching something. It’s the same level of work as someone in the Dior atelier except their work is on a runway. Some people’s labor is worth more than others.”
“Maybe it’s because of how I grew up, but I f— hate the word ‘luxury,’” says Andrade. “It feels like another tool to keep you down, to remind you what you lack as a person. The ‘You’re not good enough until you buy this thing’ idea. But the thing that keeps me loving what I do for a living is that every now and then you go to a shop and you pick up a product and you’re like, ‘Wow, this is awesome.’ I love how someone’s dream can manifest into a physical product that you can take home. That’s when you truly get to enjoy the craftsmanship, innovation and attention to detail of fashion. All the little quirks that really move you.”
424 Marathon boots, Jess Sasso ceramic.
It’s precisely those quirks that make luxury a deeply personal topic. In many ways, it’s about reciprocity. How much can your clothing give back to you? How does it carry you through the formative and mundane moments of your life? Defining luxury on your own terms offers the chance to reclaim an often esoteric and cost-prohibitive universe. “True luxury is something that stands the test of your emotional time,” says Yotka, who still wears the Marc by Marc Jacobs T-shirt she bought with her friend because it’s as timeless as it is a holder of memory. “I want your little brother or cousin to try to steal your 424 hoodie,” says Andrade. “Those are the pieces of clothing that I always treasured. The intimate relationship that you have with your clothes is the part I care about.” Alyeshmerni’s first luxury purchase was a pair of tinted Dior sunglasses with rhinestone logos on the arms, but wearing her new Baserange sweater makes her feel like she’s embarking on a relationship with a piece she’ll have in her closet for possibly the rest of her life.
While often individualistic in its gaze — used to craft one’s own identity — fashion, in all its ubiquity, also represents shared experience, from the initial design inspiration, to the hands that made it, to the dreams and fantasies we project onto our wardrobes, and their ultimate lived experience. In a rhizomatic network of energy exchanges and cues, our clothing is imbued with life from the start. The chance to add to a garment’s story with our own lineage and that of the people we love, regardless of the item’s price or brand, is perhaps the most luxurious of all.
Production assistant: Carmen Madera
Romany Williams is a writer, editor and stylist based on Vancouver Island, Canada. Her collaborators include SSENSE, Atmos, L.A. Times Image and more.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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