Luxury faces the trap of hyper-exclusivity

The luxury sector is experiencing unprecedented tension. Slowing sales, questions about desirability, and a rise in widespread mistrust: the warning signs are mounting. Faced with this instability, luxury brands have, almost mechanically, reinforced their strategies of exclusivity, thinking they would find a bulwark there. But what if the problem were not a lack of exceptionalism, but an excess of polarization? What if, in its efforts to protect the top, luxury were weakening its entire relational pyramid?

Beyond luxury fatigue: a crisis of perceived value

There is a lot of talk about luxury fatigue. The term is convenient. It suggests a temporary, almost capricious weariness, yet masks a more structural reality: luxury is currently undergoing a crisis of perceived value. Since 2019, many categories have seen their prices rise by 40 to 50%. At the same time, perceived quality has not kept pace, and in some cases has even declined. As a result, 60% of customers say they have decided not to make a purchase for this reason (EY, 2025). It is not desire that is waning, but confidence.

Fatigue is now widespread. Aspirational consumers are dropping out: nearly 35% have reduced or stopped their purchases over the last twelve months (BCG/Altagamma). Affluent consumers are becoming more selective. And even the most committed VIC customers are reaching saturation point. The rise of dupe culture, used by 71% of Gen Z, is not a rejection of luxury, but a symptom of a question that has become central: what am I really buying?

 Faced with this diagnosis, major confusion set in: the belief that the solution lay in automatic upselling, where the higher up the pyramid you climb, the more the customer would automatically expect hyper-exclusivity. However, aspirational, affluent, and VIC customers share a common fatigue: the standardization of experiences and the disconnect between price and proof.

 The problem is not the existence of the pyramid, but its misinterpretation. Under economic pressure, brands have treated it as a funnel for concentrating resources: the higher you go, the more you invest. Time, attention, products, and experiences have been sucked toward the top, creating a polarization that is now weakening the entire structure.

The first change is a return to the original business, not as a heritage element, but as active proof. Nespresso is one of the brands that illustrates this shift very well. For twenty years, its premium positioning was based on technology: machine design, capsule engineering. This held true as long as the price difference remained acceptable to customers: €0.50 per capsule, three times more expensive than a traditional coffee bean. This model has cracked. Technology no longer explains the price: it is standardized and expected. The value proposition must become tangible again.

The illusion of the summit: hyper-exclusivity as a relational dead end

Faced with the slowdown, many luxury brands have chosen to "protect the top." The figures justify this approach: approximately 2% of customers can account for up to 30% of sales, depending on the category. The problem, therefore, is not the attention paid to VIPs, but the way in which it has been conceived. In recent years, the response has often taken the form of one-upmanship: private salons outside the store, secret locations, entirely one-to-one experiences, entire teams mobilized for a single customer. On paper, everything is flawless. In reality, this approach can prove paradoxical.

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A VIC welcomed alone in an empty space, ultra-mobilized for them, does not always feel privileged. They may feel a weight. The weight of expectation. The weight of the effort made. The more diffuse weight of having to live up to what is being offered to them. The attention becomes dense, almost heavy. The silence, too emphatic. Time becomes too concentrated. The experience ceases to be a space of desire and becomes a stage. What we thought was hyper-care can then turn into an implicit injunction to buy. In these ultra-dedicated settings, the act of purchasing is no longer free: it is expected. And this expectation generates relational fatigue, even among historically very committed customers.

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Hyper-exclusivity, when it isolates, often produces the opposite effect to that desired. It stiffens the relationship instead of nurturing it. It strips luxury of an essential dimension: its collective energy. Some brands are already observing this: over-solicited VICs are stepping back, not out of disaffection, but out of emotional saturation. Because a VIC is not an archetype. They are not constantly seeking grandeur. They may want to enter a store like any other customer, browse without being solicited, move around freely, and find a sense of normality in a world they already know. Constantly imposing a dedicated itinerary on them takes away that freedom.

Bringing people together rather than isolating them: exclusivity as community

The problem with luxury today is not the existence of the pyramid, but its siloed management. By polarizing the customer journey, with boutiques on one side and above-ground VIC facilities on the other, brands are weakening the entire relational structure. They are eroding their cultural foundation, overexposing their most committed customers, and breaking the aspirational projection. This rigid segmentation has an invisible cost. By shifting scarce resources—exclusive pieces, human attention, expertise—to ultra-dedicated but low-energy spaces, luxury is impoverishing its boutique base. Yet this is where its cultural function comes into play: nurturing the collective dream, showcasing expertise, and bringing the brand to life as a living universe. When exceptional pieces disappear behind closed doors, when the craft becomes invisible, it is the very authenticity of the House that falters.

Because exclusivity is not an act of exclusion. On the contrary, it is a way of bringing people together. So the question is no longer: how can we isolate people further? But rather: how can we bring people together, at the right time, in the right way, around something truly valuable? This means reintroducing porosity into the customer journey, without ever diluting value. Some brands are leading the way by designing their stores as layered rather than segmented spaces: shared moments, where you can feel the energy of the brand community, storytelling, creation, cultural events, and more private, confidential moments, activated according to the context and intensity of the relationship. Exclusivity no longer comes through closure, but through the level of interpretation and access.

At Saint Laurent, design objects and collector's items are fully integrated into the boutique experience. Everyone can see them, but only some can access them. The dream circulates; exclusivity is expressed through use, not invisibility.

At Chanel, exclusivity is not based on removing the customer from the store, but on the selective activation of levels of privacy within the same experience. A sliding mirror, a private lounge designed as a natural extension rather than a bunker. The store remains fully visible and aspirational. 

Beyond the store, this approach extends to a renewed host posture. The brand invites people into its home. It brings together affinity groups, not by status, but by sensibility, to convey what truly underpins its value. Workshop visits, masterclasses, and meetings with artisans shift the relationship from status to meaning, from a demonstration of power to proof of authenticity.

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Luxury does not suffer from an excess of exclusivity, but from exclusivity that is poorly distributed across the spectrum. By concentrating value at the top and making it invisible elsewhere, luxury brands have weakened their cultural foundation, stiffened their relationship with their most committed customers, and broken the momentum that is the strength of luxury.

Reintroducing porosity does not mean opening up access, but restoring legibility. Seeing without owning. Understanding without accessing. Moving around without being assigned a status.

Exclusivity is not reinforced by isolation, but by a brand's ability to maintain a shared, layered, coherent framework where multiple uses can coexist without fragmenting the experience. In a climate of mistrust, luxury can no longer defend itself through one-upmanship. It is maintained through the accuracy with which it makes its value perceptible.

Opinion column for Luxus+