changing definitions of luxury

A Thing Of Beauty Is A Joy Forever... And A Good Investment?: The Return Of Passion Investing

John Keats may have been correct -- as he was with a lot of things, but he would never have imagined actually owning the beauty of nature, the thing of beauty subject he was pontificating about in the poem Endymion, or the Beauty Is Truth, Truth Beauty Grecian Urn. In both cases, he admired both nature and the Urn, but never sought to actually OWN them. That's what those 19th century Romantics did – they admired, often from afar. And often, more afar the better. But here we are in the 21st century, when those who have fiscal resources can both admire and possess them -- right now! Enter the world of passion investing.

I have written previously in Luxist concerning the changing definitions of luxury, and how in the course of a year or so, statistics show that the UHNWs and HNWs have shifted their mindset, and thus the paradigm, from conspicuous to conscious, from megalolmaniacal to mindful. This change appears to one consequence of the complex economic culture most of us have experienced since mid 2008. Luxury has evolved now into more than just a major credit card spend with an object purchase. The spend has to have the propensity to make us FEEL a certain way. It has become more about the meaningfulness and the mindfulness of the spend, with the deeper significance of having well-curated, purposeful, inspirational, authentic emotions evoked also by the object purchased.

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