Luxury lives not only in the product - it increasingly inhabits the spaces around it.

61% of consumers now seek emotional intensity from brands. On Friday I wrote about this shift, which explains why maisons expand into hotels, spas, and beach clubs.

As of mid-September 2025, Acne Studios has just unveiled its new Paris headquarters. Set in a historic laboratory-turned-townhouse, the space is more than an office, it’s a branded environment, where restored gilded ceilings, raw columns, and contemporary art merge into a stage for creativity. Luxury here is not sold, it is lived.

LEMAIRE ’s Wearable Sculptures exhibition, traveling from Paris to Seoul, shows how a brand can transform collaboration and craft into cultural ritual.

Both examples point to the same shift: luxury as atmosphere, as setting, as experience. A Christian Dior Couture spa scripts moments of happiness. A JACQUEMUS beach club becomes a dreamscape. Now even the backstage, the studio, the exhibition, is elevated into emotional encounter.

If 20th-century luxury was defined by what we wore, will 21st-century luxury be defined by the spaces we enter?