Luxury and technology: the false enemies
From Karl Lagerfeld to Bernard Arnault, via the Swiss brand Imperiali, a growing number of players are allowing technology to infiltrate luxury. The idea? To improve the client experience without severing ties with a certain authenticity. A question of balance.
The festive season raises a new type of gift-giving dilemma: should one offer a classic timepiece or the latest connected watch? A conundrum that artisans and major watchmaking brands contemplate with anxiety. What place should they give to technological innovation? How does one marry the old and the modern, tradition and novelty? A particularly thorny question when it concerns luxury brands, not generally known for their propensity to reinvent themselves through technology. Is luxury impervious to innovation? Less and less so.
Surpassing the previous generation
What do a Patek Philippe and an Apple Watch have in common? A priori, apart from the fact that both tell the time, not much. While Patek Philippe builds its communication around the idea of a heritage to be passed on to future generations, Apple boasts, with each new generation of its smartwatch, of offering a model so perfected that the previous one seems outdated. While luxury is tied to values such as permanence and timelessness, technology moves from update to update, living solely to surpass its previous generation. While the former seeks to enter posterity, the latter surfs on planned obsolescence.
What the consumer looks for in a luxury object is, in fact, the possibility of buying a piece of this history — as perfectly illustrated by the famous slogan of the Swiss watchmaker: "You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation." The same is true of collectors of exceptional wines who, in acquiring bottles of rare quality, invest considerable sums in order to acquire a piece of history — a wine whose exceptional qualities transcend time.
Technological innovation imposes its hegemony
And yet, we live in an era where technological innovation is imposing its hegemony on all objects, including luxury ones. Aided by hyper-connectivity, most objects arriving on the market must be "intelligent" and meet the new standards associated with the IoT (Internet of Things). The luxury world would do well to capitalise on technological innovation, as it represents an invaluable opportunity to reinvent itself and conquer new markets — and there is no need for this to involve thinking about the Holy Grail of the luxury connected watch, which brands like Tag Heuer are already working on.
A first opportunity has emerged with personalisation. From the Louis Vuitton trunk to the options of a Rolls-Royce, major brands compete in ingenuity by providing their clients with interfaces to personalise their luxury objects. Another interaction between the seemingly irreconcilable worlds of luxury and technology lies in the possibility of communicating more easily — and therefore of meeting the public's growing demand for transparency.
Filming craftspeople at work
It is now possible to film and broadcast craftspeople at work in their workshops — including in real time — in order to demonstrate the authenticity of local production. An option adopted by LVMH, which offers on its website a virtual tour of the Louis Vuitton prototyping workshop and testing laboratory. The stated objective: to gain in closeness without losing desirability. The next step may perhaps be to allow internet users to control the camera themselves, always in the spirit of transparency.
Bernard Arnault's group, while bringing together more than 120,000 employees, prides itself on having maintained a "start-up mentality". Thus, while Louis Vuitton invented the Monogram canvas to combat counterfeiting more than 120 years ago, the brand's creativity does not belong to the past: in 2015, it became the first luxury brand to organise a hackathon, in which participants had 48 hours to develop an application aimed at better understanding its clients and anticipating the evolution of luxury.
Connected fitting rooms
Karl Lagerfeld, too, did not resist the appeal of modernity. His concept store in Saint-Germain-des-Prés is equipped with connected fitting rooms that allow customers to take their own portrait, apply various filters and effects to the image, and share everything on social networks to gather the opinions of their friends and family. The store also makes available a myriad of touchscreens offering the chance to discover collections and runway shows, in order to enhance the client experience.
Technological innovation can also be linked to production. In watchmaking, clearly, the use of more sophisticated means has contributed to a reduction in the production time of certain parts, which the watchmaking craftsman then assembles by hand. This "industrialisation" has allowed luxury to be "democratised" — making it accessible to a greater number. Brands have resolved the problem of this "vulgarisation" by implementing gradation systems: one makes people dream with exclusive pieces and sells the entry-level product to the masses.
A perfect hybridisation of genres
As we can see, the points of convergence between luxury and technological innovation are numerous. And we have not even spoken of the objects themselves, some of which achieve a perfect hybridisation of genres: the Genevan brand Imperiali has brought to market a cigar humidor priced at CHF 1 million — a prestigious object of which each piece is unique — incorporating, among other features, a cigar cutter with a laser sight.
If the link between luxury and technology is becoming ever more tenuous, it is tied to other very powerful values: authenticity and transparency. In other words, technology must be placed at the service of luxury — revealing its excellence, not distorting it. Finding this balance means, for a major brand, embracing modernity without losing sight of its heritage: an imperative.
