Latest in Luxury

Dr Debbie Coney

I’ve long been fascinated by the emotional, cultural, and symbolic power of luxury spaces—from the stillness of a high-end boutique to the transience of an airport terminal. My doctoral work explored the airport as a luxury space, where shopping becomes fleeting, ritualised, liminal, and laden with meaning. That research sparked an enduring interest in how luxury is shaped not just by what we buy, but where, how, and when we encounter it.

Over time, my research has extended further into the world of temporary luxury spaces—those designed to exist only briefly but leave lasting impressions. This piece explores how these ephemeral formats—from pop-ups to immersive brand installations—are transforming the way luxury is defined, delivered, and experienced in today’s culture of immediacy.

Why Ephemerality Matters

Luxury has long been anchored in permanence: flagship stores, heritage buildings, and legacy ateliers. But in a saturated, hyper-connected landscape, what’s fleeting now holds prestige. Ephemeral retail spaces—temporary, highly curated environments—are no longer just experimental. They’ve become strategic tools for brands seeking to create symbolic scarcity and spatial storytelling.

They’re not simply about selling product. They’re about staging myth.

What Ephemeral Spaces Offer Luxury Brands

Through this continued line of research, I’ve come to understand ephemeral retail as more than just a marketing tactic. These spaces serve multiple strategic and symbolic functions:

These activations allow brands to remain agile, relevant, and emotionally resonant—especially with younger, experience-driven audiences who value moments over materials.

Final Thoughts

The spaces we shop in are never neutral. They shape emotion, memory, and meaning—especially in luxury. Today, we’re seeing a shift: from the permanence of prestige to the luxury of the moment.

Ephemeral spaces are not a departure from luxury’s DNA. They’re an evolution—rooted in narrative, exclusivity, and immersion. In an era that often equates value with endurance, luxury’s power may lie in being intentionally fleeting—but able to leave a memorable moment.

Hosted by Dr. Debbie Coney Pinder

Welcome to The Thing About Luxury, a podcast that delves into the evolving world of luxury—its icons, innovations, and the individuals redefining its boundaries.

I am Dr. Debbie Coney Pinder, a luxury brand specialist, academic, and consultant with a deep-seated passion for the narratives that shape the luxury landscape. As the Programme Leader for the MA in Luxury Brand Management at the University of Southampton and founder of Coney Luxury, I’ve dedicated my career to exploring the nuances of luxury branding, consumer behavior, and experiential design.

Each episode features candid conversations with entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and visionaries who offer unique insights into what luxury means today. From the intricacies of brand storytelling to the challenges of sustainability and digital transformation, we uncover the layers that make luxury both timeless and ever-changing.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional or simply intrigued by the allure of luxury, this podcast invites you to explore its many facets with curiosity and critical thought.

🎧 New episodes released monthly.
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Listen to Debbie’s latest discussion on luxury & running

BBC RADIO 4 – YOU & YOURS! 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kwv8

Is luxury running a thing? There’s a new 120 mile race where the competitors get Michelin-starred food and a sauna to help their recovery. Debbie chats to Sharli Vahl (Radio 4 host) and Kate Carter (running journalist) about the idea of luxury in ultra marathons.

Even though the online world has been accelerating at incredible speed as a result of rolling pandemic lockdowns, the role of the physical bricks a mortar store retains its significance.

Primarily, the physical store offers an escape into a brands ethos. The physical space is an opportunity to tell the brands unique story through imaginative installations, rich materials, and sustainable and wellness philosophies. Therefore, the store offers a holistic experience though physical details which a one-dimensional Instagram page cannot achieve.

“It’s about the language and the landscape your product lives in; the packaging, the entertainment, circus, the education – all those things encompassed. You look at all the great brands that succeed today – they have storytelling elements. They draw the consumer in to be the creative heartbeat.”

_{The luxury fragrance and wellness expert, Jo Malone.}

Within today’s restrictions, and in-line with social distancing and no touch displays, physical experiences can be touchless and tactile by embracing design and creating ambiance. Imagine voice activated and feature restorative interactive visuals projected on walls, and audio content, combined with relaxing scents, and natural plant displays, which immerse the customer in a central eco-holistic experience. Furthermore, strategies must be in place to cater for customer anxiety over entering the physical store. For example, luxury brand stores must offer exceptional services, exclusive products and personalisation to appeal to reluctant shoppers. Secondly, stores now have to promote their health protection measures and create store interiors which are relaxing, minimal and are obviously hygienic, in addition to allowing space for social distancing within the stores. This also means offering appointments to customers to cater for space-sharing anxiety.

Thirdly, luxury brand stores should consider online shopping facilities and ‘click and collect’ opportunities for customers with anxiety over entering the store space. Finally, luxury brands must include technology to attract and retain customers. For example, where customers are still concerned about entering into the physical store space, luxury brands must find a way of engaging these consumers online, or through augmented or virtual reality inside or exterior of the store, to encourage them to engage in the products and services. The use of technology is also required in a contactless journey within the store, such as contactless payments to comply with health and safety measures.

Therefore, luxury retail needs to invest in innovation and work towards perfecting the customer experience, because customers want a calming and friendly environment within which they can explore and be immersed in the heart of the brand. According to a 2020 PWC Customer Experience Survey, 73% of customers say a good experience creates brand loyalty.

As luxury consumers become tired of restrictions and one-dimensional shopping experiences, they will return to the physical store as a place to escape and find healing in their own wellbeing. 

Millennials and Gen Z, the most affluent luxury brand consumers of today, live and breathe digital. These tech-savvy consumers respond to seamless experiences which are integrated online and offline. In a pandemic-world, this is what is driving global luxury trends and sales growth. 

This wave of digitalisation has helped luxury brands rethink priorities and has forced brands to optimise resources and make each step of the value chain more efficient and cost effective. With the cancellation of events and experiences, brands have had to come up with new and innovative ways to interact with their consumers in a virtual way.

A significant advantages of being online, is the analytics and big data at play: brands have realised they can access the right data to create effective marketing strategies and target the right audience. 

AI is also proving significant in optimising the seamless strategy online-instore, and helping brands to manage product development and issues in the supply chain. 

Digital transformation in luxury, is therefore about building, empowering, and enhancing internal and external human relationships.

To achieve the optimal Digital transformation in luxury, it requires a change in the organizational structure because it commands seamless, friction-free execution, not self-serving, disconnected, or dysfunctional activities. The focus must be on the customers, the customer segments, and domain expertise.  These experts must organize, reorganize, and coalesce around customer-centric objectives, demonstrating the most powerful empathic and emotionally intelligent communication.

It’s hard to remember what it was like pre-Covid-19, when we could walk around without wearing a face mask, go to the pub (and sit inside!), visit the shops on a mission to buy something beautiful and excessive, or jump on an aeroplane to a far-away tropical place. Whatever the future holds, and however we emerge out of this pandemic, what we do know, is the luxury landscape has changed.

What’s happened? Throughout 2020, the luxury industry shrank on a scale not seen before, around 22% (Bain&Co. 2021), and now sits at €1 trillion (2015 levels).

Pre Covid-19. We talked about luxury experiences. Everything was centred on hospitality and travel, along with experienced based goods, such as luxury cars, private jets and yachts. All of these have been devastated by the pandemic, with luxury travel declining by 80% (McKinsey 2020). Globally, China has been the only region to fare well and grew at 45%, while Europe slumped by 36% due to the collapse in tourism. However, by the end of 2021 the luxury goods market is expected to recover 50% of the profit lost during 2020, and will recover to 2019 levels by 2023 (Bain&Co. 2021). 

So, where do we see the future of luxury?

Online. In the luxury market, online sales made up €49 billion in 2020, up from €33 billion in 2019. The share of purchases made online nearly doubled from 12% in 2019 to 23% in 2020. By 2025 online will take over the main channel for luxury consumption.

Omnichannel. The distribution of physical luxury stores is going to change. Luxury brands will need to streamline their distribution of physical stores, and develop ways of maximising customer experience, consistently, across online and instore.

Second hand. In luxury, we speak of timelessness, and quality, and this is the reason why – luxury has to last. With the Millennial mindset comes sustainability and ethics. In line with this, is recycling, upcycling and repurposing. In 2020, second hand luxury goods sales rose by 9% to €28 billion. Luxury brands will need to consider how they control resale of their luxury goods in-house. Can luxury brands consider renting out their best sellers as an extension of their core business?

Sustainable, ethical, transparency. Luxury brands will need to re-evaluate and redefine the purpose of its brand, instigated by the impact of the pandemic. Luxury brands will move to producing more durable and higher-quality products, commit to valuing employees, make its supply chain fully transparent and traceable, maximize its environmental and social commitments, and create economic value from sustainability.

Younger generations. Generations Y and Z will continue to take over as the key consumers of luxury, and will represent around 65% of global purchases by 2025.

China. Chinese consumers are expected to dominate global luxury consumption, growing to represent over 45% of global purchases by 2025. Consideration will be required over how to enter into the China mainland market, and sustain interest from local consumers.