“I love Luxury. And Luxury lies not in richness and ornateness but in the absence of vulgarity. Vulgarity is the ugliest word in our language. I stay in the game to fight it.” Coco Chanel.
Our idea of luxury: it is guided by people who know what should be avoided at all costs. Chanel let us know that her aim was to create good taste by keeping things simple. This has always been the battleground of good taste with excess the enemy of it. Luxury and good taste are therefore not necessarily connected. This trend is happening right now in design and digital communications. The idea that we can simply “create simple luxury” began a few years ago in the magazine industry. “Simple” was as an antidote to the over-designed graphics, ads, covers and general crowding of the visual communications world. A huge trend emerged, for the markets in Western Europe and the US: That simple, was good. This is greatly contrasted by the emerging markets worldwide in the luxury sector. Simple, is, well, not so good. Time is important to Luxury. Time makes a luxury brand, much to the consternation of those who want everything, now. In a perfectly engineered luxury campaign, “the essence of time” is something that was recently achieved in a LVMH campaign entitled “nowness” in which the concept of luxury was to live for the moment, or “now”.
We’re fascinated at this “return” to the “simple” and, to “now” as a new definition of luxury. You’ll begin to see it everywhere and its here to stay.
The Editors
ARTIFICE Atelier 
