Hard Luxe: In Search of Everyday Luxury In The East Midlands

If you work in cultural or qualitative research, there's a good chance you've been asked more than once to investigate what "everyday luxury" (or "accessible luxury," or "mass premium quality") means for people - perhaps people in the UK, or the US, or China, or Brazil. Perhaps all four of those, and more.

There's also a good chance you might have found yourself wondering, after wrapping up your desk research and your fieldwork in London and New York, Los Angeles and Shanghai, Tokyo and Barcelona: what does everyday luxury (or accessible luxury, or mass premium quality) look like for people outside of major global cities? Where can people who don't live in affluent regions go to enjoy an affordably luxurious experience without travelling to some other, wealthier destination - and what kinds of accessibly luxurious products are available to them there, on their doorstep?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the value of embedded cultural knowledge in research - and the ways in which digital cultures, product algorithms and AI-generated outputs can fool us into believing that the world, its multifarious people and their particular behaviours and everyday practices are more homogenous than is actually the case. I've also been thinking about my East Midlands hometown, Leicester, as a sort of exemplar of less affluent, less globally connected cities found outside of capital destinations: the ones you might not consider visiting, when planning a trip (or a couple of weeks of fieldwork) abroad.

(This is in many ways a massive misrepresentation of a place that contains the most culturally-diverse high street in Britain . But you take my point).

It's to Leicester, then, that I've started to look, when trying to decipher what "everyday luxury" might mean to those (majority of) people in the UK who don't live in London or Manchester - and when hunting for evidence of how its meanings might be changing.

Not many of the things I've found there recently are what might be considered emergent by the standards of global capitals - not many, that is, are telling a new and exciting kind of brand or cultural story. And Leicester, to be frank, wouldn't necessarily be my first port of call, were I on the hunt for the most innovative, mould-breaking meanings and manifestations of luxury experience.?

But those things I've found... they are revealing. And the stories they do tell give us a fairly clear indication of how "everyday luxury" - ordinary, little-treat luxury - is constructed for and by the majority of Britons.

Specifically:

1. Everyday Luxury Is Mass & Global, Not Local & Idiosyncratic

Mostly, more premium products and services on offer in Leicester come with global brand recognition - and a commensurate assurance of quality - attached: the Swiss precision of Rolex and Breitling, the Francophone sophistication of Artisan du Chocolat, the Italian artistry and artisanal flourish of Alessi, Versace, YSL... even Carluccio's, despite its English roots.

Regionally-produced luxury does exist, in pockets - the Michelin-starred, farm-to-table John's House restaurant and the specialty chocolatier Cocoa Amore , to name a couple. But everyday luxury, for the most part, means global, not local.

2. Macaronification Is Real

Everyday luxury items, in Leicester and elsewhere, are coded across categories as macarons: delicate, pastel-hued arrangements of clothing, perfume, jewellery, shower gels (and more) that signal patissier-level craftsmanship and promise endless variety, and therein the possibility of infinite consumer choice. And that might just be good enough to eat (though I wouldn't recommend it).?

The filter-friendly hues and Insta-ready aesthetics probably don't hurt product appeal here, either.

See, for example: Fussy and Monday in hair and personal care; Typo stationery and Stanley cups ; Chopard purses and Swarovski boxes. And a dozen or more brands besides.

3. Gritty Juxtapositions Are Unavoidable

Unlike London but like many cities of a similar size, Leicester has no particular geographic concentration of serious affluence within its city limits - no Knightsbridge, Kensington or Mayfair to call its own.?

Instead, the layout and design constraints of the place necessitate that premium destinations and (everyday) luxury retail spaces sit side-by-side with less desirable or salubrious locations: abandoned buildings, slightly dodgy parks, public toilets, and prisons.

(This is not an exaggeration: the Voco hotel, for example - which offers "luxurious skyline suites [and] hot tub terraces" - overlooks all four of the above. The "sophisticated" Villare Hotel rests atop a sandwich bar and an old-school taxi rank and booking office).

It also means that...

4. Some Higher-End Retailers Operate In Pockets: (Premium) Curated Spaces Within (Less Premium) Spaces

John Lewis, Swarovski, the Apple Store, Jo Malone, the Goldsmiths Concept Showroom (featuring brands from Rolex to Gucci)... in Leicester, all of these are found within a very specific section of the Highcross shopping centre - itself a sprawling, self-contained city-within-a-city containing restaurants, cinema screens, bars, workout spaces and apartment blocks, as well as a multi-storey car park so comprehensive the casual everyday-luxury shopper need never set foot in Leicester proper.?

(The appearance of the John Lewis section of the Highcross itself, an undulating Zaha Hadid-esque slab of glistening silver, couldn't make the distinction between the shopping centre and the city more explicit. Juxtaposed with the boarded-up stores, construction sites and dual carriages that surround it, the Highcross could be an oversized 25th-century spacecraft, touched down in a JG Ballard-style concrete dystopia).

Everyday luxury here is in the city, but not of the city. It's aspirational, perhaps - but communicates none of the comforting familiarity conveyed by the (now shuttered) Fenwick, Lewis's and Debenhams department stores that once welcomed potential customers in from Leicester's high streets.?

5. At-Home & Make-Your-Own Premium Experiences Still Proliferate in Food & Drink

From Tesco to Hotel Chocolat, customers are invited to make their own moments of luxurious indulgence through an ever-growing array of branded kitchen devices and ingredients. Why go to Starbucks, when the supermarket up the road can sell you a box of barista-quality pods for your Dolce Gusto ? Why open your wallet for a chocolate float in Haute Dolci on Granby Street when you can buy a Velvetiser ?

So, what are the lessons here? What can we as researchers - and brand owners, and retailers - take from this snapshot?

A couple of things, I'd suggest:

Retailers and brands need to bridge the gap between desirably hard-to-get (i.e. the inaccessibility and better-than-you promise that characterises traditional luxury) and reassuringly familiar, i.e. a proposition that entices, but doesn't alienate. That is: to offer an everyday luxury retail experience that's both aspirational and comforting; both credibly premium and literally embedded in the local community, not stashed away inside the sanitised bubble of a purpose-built shopping-and-lifestyle arena.

Similarly: there's a gap in the (Leicester) market for glocal everyday luxury. A product, space and/or service (or campaign) that fuses the quality assurance and sophistication of the global-cosmopolitan with the intimacy and humanity of the local and regional. There's space, moreover, for already well-received global brands to deliver more regionally-nuanced and locally-relevant communications and campaigns, to better engage customer interest.

And one final lesson: never try to eat a handbag. Even if it does look a bit like a macaron.

#research #culturalinsight #semiotics #retail #luxury #mrx