I’ve always had a soft spot for questions like this. They remind me of philosophy essays from when I was a student, when you were given a single sentence and four hours to think, to circle around it, to try to say something that felt just right.
This one was simple: what is luxury, really?
It came from one of you, a little while ago. And since then, I’ve found myself noticing how often the word luxury appears, almost everywhere, as if we were collectively trying to redefine it, over and over again.
Time is the new luxury, we’re told. Being offline, too. Sleeping well. Cooking from scratch. Living slowly. Even having children, in some circles, is now spoken about as a kind of ultimate luxury. And alongside this, there are all these categories that keep multiplying (loud luxury, quiet luxury, neo luxury, experiential luxury), each one proposing its own version of what it means to live well.
I understand the intention behind all this, and yet I can’t help but feel slightly at a distance from it. Perhaps because it all feels a little restless, as if we were trying to give a name to something that keeps escaping us, or perhaps trying to convince ourselves that we have found it.
So I came back to the question, more simply.
What is luxury, really?
And my answer, in the end, is almost disarmingly simple.
For me, luxury is freedom.
Not in an abstract or grand way, but in something much more intimate, much more everyday. The freedom to choose, of course, but also the freedom to be, and perhaps even more importantly, the freedom to refuse. The freedom to wear what feels right to you, without needing to justify it. The freedom to move through the world in a way that is coherent with who you are, even if it doesn’t quite fit into any of the categories we are offered.
Because that is, I think, where I feel the most distance from all these modern interpretations of luxury. They still define, they still categorise, they still suggest a certain way of being, even when they claim to do the opposite. And there is something subtly constraining in that.
Freedom, on the other hand, leaves space. It doesn’t tell you what your life should look like. It simply allows you to decide, for yourself, what feels like luxury, at a given moment, in your own life. For some, it will be time; for others, silence, beauty, comfort, independence. There is no hierarchy, no single answer to aspire to.
And perhaps that is why this idea feels, to me, quietly French, not in the sense of an aesthetic or a cliché, but in something more essential. Liberté. The idea that, within the very real constraints that shape our lives (financial, social, geographical), there is still a margin, however small, where choice exists. And maybe that margin is precisely where luxury begins.
So if I had to leave you with something, it would be this: don’t try too hard to define what luxury should be. Don’t worry about whether it is quiet or loud, visible or invisible, aspirational or understated. Let it be something you recognise, rather than something you perform.
Be free, in your own way, at your own pace. Free to like what you like, free to change your mind, free to begin something or to stop, to live in a way that feels true to you. Because if luxury is so often tied to a price, to a number, to a form of access, freedom remains, in the end, entirely your own.
And that, perhaps, is the most valuable thing of all.
Léonce.
