Fashion Industry Issues: The Relevance of a Luxury Brand

A luxury brand or prestige brand is a brand for which a majority of its products are luxury goods. It may also include certain brands whose names are associated with luxury, high price, or high quality, though few, if any, of their goods are presently considered luxury goods. In India, luxury is cherished and valued. However, the luxury brands in India are drifting away from their essence in terms of exclusivity. The feeling of awe when you purchase a luxury good cannot be rightfully depicted by a simple graphic or a photograph. Luxury is an experience, though in a today’s world I understand that brands need to make money and SMM works quite well if you want to reach the masses, it might even be good for the brand in the short run. However, reaching the masses also puts the brand’s exclusivity at risk which means putting the Luxury brand’s image at risk in the long run. Of course there isn’t any other argumentative issue in the luxury in fashion and lifestyle market today than what makes a brand “REAL” Luxury?

The industry establishment frequently claims that this brand or that one simply doesn’t measure up to their inbred standard, thus negating it as a competitive threat. But all that is changing, as the very definition of “luxury” is undergoing a paradigm shift in the consumer market. In a recent survey conducted with over 600 luxury retailers and marketers by Unity Marketing and Luxury Daily, industry insiders identified the very definition of luxury is changing as the No. 1 threat disrupting the business of luxury. Increasingly, luxury is becoming irrelevant with the result, as this insider said, “Luxury retailers and brands have lost their way”. (Danziger, 2017)

The perplexity facing the luxury industry today is the change in how consumers define luxury and the new path to purchase is dramatically redefining the marketing strategy. Luxury in fashion and lifestyle brands must be very agile and innovative in order to gain the favors of the new luxury consumer, which are increasing on an everyday basis. The luxury industry has another issue which can be termed as an Identity Crisis. The idea that, luxury matters less and less to the millennial, is a real concern, as they will know what luxury means versus the other brands which are being defined via diverse marketing efforts and with a high influence from the Social Media.

Today, every marketer’s challenge is to transcribe their brand value messages into values that are truly meaningful and relevant to today’s customers” lifestyles as well as their increasingly sophisticated and informed mindset. But on the contrary, luxury brand marketers can’t dictate or dominate the markets anymore. To be successful, they must sincerely follow the customers” lead, an idea foreign to the powers that are predominant in the industry at present.

During my research, Putting the Luxe Back in Luxury: How new consumer values are redefining the way we market luxury by P.N. Danziger, really helped me gain insight for the various components that define luxury and the values a luxury brand holds. These values still hold in the face of the changing affluent consumer demographics, purchase behavior and their new thinking about what luxury in fashion actually means. But each value has to be understood correctly for today’s customers.

When we find ourselves surrounded by many of the heritage luxury brands we know, like Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci and Hermès, who have strived hard to meet these criteria and have been successful in creating a space for themselves. But the same situation is with many new-age brands. However, with the new aged brands, the problem is that most of them don’t have values of a traditional Luxury Brand.