JKR

It’s a basic rule of free market economics (as I understand it) that expensive things get cheaper over time. Consider big flat screen TVs; once the provenance of oligarchs, now in the humblest of UK home. Eight years ago, a 100% cashmere pashmina would set you back about £200 in the UK. Three years ago, M&S were selling one for £60. Now you can buy one in a supermarket for £35.

The soft-touch Nude packaging above was quite the thing, but costly to manufacture. Now it is possible to replicate this technique at a more affordable price and one is seeing it in more affordable products. As brand builders, the codes and executions that signify ‘prestige luxury’ are never out of your grasp for long. So it pays to know what’s coming.

The observant ‘mass’ brands follow the codes of the leaders to give us all access to a little bit of what we desire. The even smarter mass prestige brands are savvy to the high-end codes, but create original design equities that are distinctive to themselves. Because this is the true nature of real prestige. It’s not about the substrate or how expensive one can look. The most valuable and valued equity any brand can have is actually free – originality.