... and excess becomes silence

Tom Junkersdorf is one of the highest-profile experts on luxury and lifestyle in the German-speaking world. In March 2020, the ex-editor-in-chief of GQ founded the agency Off-ScriptT, an agency that offers customized PR and marketing services to high-profile brands and individuals. Junkersdorf wrote an exclusive essay in the June/July issue of m&k.

In its Podcast "Tomorrow" Junkersdorf talks to stars, CEOs, designers and disruptors of the world's most famous luxury brands about their extraordinary lives. How their business is changing, what style means today and what luxury really means. 

Think of a new term already. You will be able to score points with it at the next dinner party, if they are allowed again. The buzzword is: "Quiet Luxury". Quiet luxury, quieter luxury.

A new normality

No, there will be no "back to normal". What we are experiencing is a "new normal." Covid-19 has shifted the tectonic plates of our lives forever. Luxury brands, with their deep-rooted sensitivity to trends, naturally sense this and are turning down the sound as a precaution. This can be read precisely on Instagram, the industry's fever thermometer. Where people can no longer travel without restraint or shop without a breathing mask, the luxury lifestyle can no longer be shared excessively. Influencers are desperately trying to post against it, but the livestreams from their own living rooms don't seem very likeable compared to the casual "So in love" posts from Milan Fashion Week or the exotic waterfall in Bali. And the demand for stay-at-home smoothies and home office workouts is too small for the flood of influencers to make a living.

"Game over" for influencers

Key Learning: The Influencer Game is Over. In 2019, marketing decision makers spent 8.5 billion euros on social media stars. Eighty-five percent of those budgets are now gone. Most forever. Booked friendships and sponsored posts no longer work at a time when tens of thousands of people are being killed and millions are struggling to make ends meet. As brutal as Covid-19 is eating away at the world, it's having a healing side effect on our value system: suddenly, the heroes are the nurses and doctors or supermarket checkout clerks who are on the front lines during the pandemic - no longer the It kids from Front Row. Now it's not about Likes, it's about saving lives. It's about real values. Real achievement. It's about attitude. About authenticity and commitment. Key Learning: Fake is over. Less product, more purpose. It's no longer about WHAT, but much more about WHY. When we look back at 2020 someday, we will realize: There was a world before Corona and a world after. Nothing in between.

Yesterday" has never been as old as it is today

The "throwbacks" that are uploaded on social media without being asked and that want to remind us of the past seem like something from another life. Did that really exist? People without masks, fearless hugs, the society bosom kiss ... unimaginable today. Spots from the pre-Corona era seem like messages from the last century. Toxic canned communications. We can safely dispose of them. The post-Corona era has a different look and feel. More vulnerable, more appreciative, more profound. Anyone who doesn't understand this is misunderstood.

Until now, we only knew scarcity from luxury brands that artificially limited their pieces in order to push desire and, in the end, the price. Now everyone has experienced that the shelves with noodles and toilet paper can be empty overnight. That changes the view.
People have become more sensitive. They register exactly how wrong it is when a soccer millionaire proudly posts a selfie from his 216,000-euro Bentley convertible while corpses are stacked in refrigerated trucks in New York. The social horror is greater today than it was during the financial crisis of 2007/2008. Corona is both a market crash and a deadly virus.

Authenticity is high on the agenda

But people are now also sustainably registering what is right. Who really stands up for others. This switch from ME to WE is crucial. This new feeling of community and solidarity. That connects. When companies that are themselves in need and lose sales convert their factories to produce urgently needed disinfectants instead of exclusive perfumes or sew breathing masks instead of trendy It shirts. Competitors become colleagues. Budgets don't go to campaigns, but to aid projects. Yes, we are in this together. This time it's more than a slogan. It's a turning point in time. "For the first time in history, we are all united in a cause," says designer Stella McCartney. The World united in the fight against Corona and the unforeseeable consequences of the pandemic ...

"We need to come out of this crisis with a change," says Stella McCartney, drawing the big picture: "For the first time in history, we can accurately measure the damage we're doing to the planet when we see, for example, CO2 emissions go down 25 percent in China alone because of the lockdown." The crisis as an opportunity.

So everything on reset. We need to readjust our mindset - as fundamentally as we last did after #Metoo and #TimesUp. Venture capitalists in Silicon Valley say, "No one regrets adapting quickly and decisively to changing circumstances" At this sentence, I remember the international Luxury Conference in Cape Town, April 2019. Only a year and yet like an eternity. On the agenda was nothing less than the future of luxury. But no one foresaw this future. On the panel, CEOs from Gucci to Tiffany discussed sustainability, diversity and inclusivity. The buzzwords of the season. And how important transparency in supply chains is. Today, it's all about infection chains. Amazon's new USP: Ensuring that packages arrive virus-free at the door.

More (free) time than we can stand?

Before Corona, thought leaders in the premium segment agreed that time was the new, true luxury. People were rushing through the world too much. Today, we're glued to our home offices with more hours to spare than we can stand.

"The New Normal: Social Distancing instead of Shared Workplaces. One's own car is becoming the new safe place because it is more virus-free than car sharing. Today, security is considered a great luxury. Health is a luxury, absolutely. The new messages are: Help and solidarity. "I care" is the new "I love." Breitling CEO Georges Kern says, "We will have a different understanding of luxury in the future, more conscious, more casual and less formal." Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius sees an era of "modern sustainable luxury." For the luxury industry, with its 281 billion euros in annual sales, this is an exciting prospect.

Lockdown and question of meaning

Designers and creatives have used the global lockdown to ask the question of meaning. Is it really smart to create ever more and ever faster hypes with fast fashion and an endless flood of delivery? The Outcome: 114 billion garments were sold worldwide in 2019. Downside: 70 percent of all textiles end up in the trash unworn. "We pushed everything to excess," designer Marc Jacobs confesses in the Quarantine Call: "By the end, everyone was exhausted. The designer, the clients, the guests - no one could really appreciate it anymore. A waste of time and energy and money and materials."

His learning: "The fashion world as we know it will no longer exist. The positive thing now is that everyone can listen to themselves, what am I actually contributing to the good of the world? If each of us does something good for someone else, we're further along than we were before the crisis."

Absurd overproduction

Giorgio Armani, grand master of good taste, appeals to all colleagues in an open letter: "The overproduction is absurd. Luxury cannot and must not be fast. Luxury needs time to be achieved and appreciated." His State of Mind: "It makes no sense that one of my jackets or suits hangs in the store for three weeks before they are already considered obsolete and have to be replaced by new, not too different goods. I think it's immoral to do that. And enough with the events where you fly around the world to stage shows that seem inappropriate and even a bit vulgar in this day and age of sustainability, and ultimately are just a waste of resources and money."

Designers and brands like Dries van Noten, Thom Browne, Tory Burch and MyTheresa are joining in. They have founded an initiative to curb discount battles like Cyber Monday and Black Friday. Gucci and Saint Laurent are dropping out of the Fashion Week calendar. Patek Philippe, Rolex, Hublot, Chopard and Tag Heuer are leaving Baselword, the world's largest watch fair, to create a new, presumably more modern salon. Welcome to the new normal: opinion-forming top executives are completely re-evaluating long absolutely unquestioned rituals, most of which come from a pre-Internet age, after Covid-19. Who needs physical trade shows anymore, when product launches can be staged digitally in a visibly better, more budget-friendly and independent of pandemics?

Where there was sale, there is connection

Virgil Abloh, Sun King of Luxury, says: "I think it's time for our industry to build real coalitions. It's not just about sales, it's about making a human connection. Communication with customers is key. We need to carve out a new way to be really close to our customers."

And: "I think we will cement a trend with a focus on sustainability and consumers who buy quality. People will move to companies and brands that have Purpose. We have the opportunity and responsibility now to do the right thing and change the system failures."