From Birkin to a seat: Luxury’s new scarcity play

In March 2026, Hermès turned the Grand Palais into an equestrian arena for the Saut Hermès, a show-jumping competition staged where nothing was on sale. What the house offered its best clients was not another Birkin but a seat. That seat represents luxury’s next scarcity play. Asia’s ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs) are driving the shift, having already acquired the products and now seeking what ownership alone cannot deliver. The shift is commercially urgent. The global luxury customer base has fallen from 400 million in 2022 to 340 million, according to a Bain-Altagamma report. Meanwhile, a separate study by Altagamma and Boston Consulting Group finds that the top 0.1% of clients now generate 37% of the sector’s value, with 80% of luxury’s top clients preferring intimate, exclusive spaces over standardized retail. Why access is replacing visibility Unplugged luxury is not simply quiet aesthetics or logo-free dressing. It is the experience of being unreachable: private, slow, controlled, and difficult to reproduce online. The status symbol is the closed door, not the open feed. “Across our membership, I see growing demand for smaller gatherings, private homes, salon conversations, and experiences built around ideas and introductions rather than aesthetics,” says Natasha Slater, founder of The Robin, a global luxury membership club. That instinct is reshaping how brands court their most important clients. Louis Vuitton recently invited clients to Marrakech for a private high jewelry showing — a palace hotel, a candlelit dinner, the pieces seen up close. One Chinese guest described the trip on Xiaohongshu as “full of Louis Vuitton’s charm.” Quality of access: Luxury’s new status signal As the expectations of wealthy consumers continue to rise, genuinely rare access is becoming harder for brands to deliver. Knight Frank’s 2026 analysis estimates that an average of 89 people a day crossed the $30 million threshold over the past five years. That is the scarce good now: luxury is becoming less about visibility and more about access. “Clients are showing a clear preference for privacy, discretion, and controlled environments. Having access to private, intimate spaces is not just about comfort — it has become a subtle expression of status in itself,” observes a retail activation expert at Hermès’ headquarters, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media. Chanel gathered its top Chinese clients at a private high jewelry gala dedicated to Chinese New Year in London this February, a low-key evening where the art pieces, the space, and the guests blended without spectacle. Cultural experience: Depth over breadth What money cannot buy through the usual channels is private knowledge — experiences that cannot be replicated online or captured in a photograph. They are defined instead by understanding, human connection, and privileged insight. The Legacy Experience builds private itineraries around restorers, collectors, and houses that money cannot open on its own. Across clients from mainland China, South Korea, and Japan, Alice Cagliani, co-founder of The Legacy Experience, saw a pronounced appreciation for cultural depth, craftsmanship, and heritage and a cultural literacy that often arrives before the client does. “They are not simply consuming culture but are actively comparing it,” Cagliani tells Jing Daily. Luxury houses are rebuilding client strategies around this shift. Italian luxury brand Brunello Cucinelli hosts friends of the house in Solomeo, the medieval Umbrian village the company has restored around a School of Crafts and a Forum of the Arts, where the appeal lies in heritage and the link between craftsmanship and legacy. One Chinese client described watching an artisan hand-stitch cashmere under tall windows and dining at his favorite local restaurant. The shape of the trip has changed with the appetite. “A trip that 10 years ago might have included six cities in seven days is now more likely to spend three full days in a single region, with one or two carefully built encounters per day,” Cagliani says. The shift is a deliberate redistribution: less time in transit, fewer scheduled activities, and more time spent with one expert, one craftsman, one collection. Luxury is an expansion of time around something rare. Continuity: Loyalty that travels across borders Luxury retail is increasingly adapting by strengthening clienteling capabilities, leveraging data to better understand global clients, and ensuring continuity of experience across locations. Recognition, not novelty, is the new loyalty. Louis Vuitton and Hermès, for instance, train advisers to remember clients’ preferences and histories across markets. “For Asian clients in particular, the expectation is to be recognized, remembered, and seamlessly served, whether they are in Paris, Shanghai, or elsewhere,” explains the client activation expert at Hermès. “The challenge is no longer just selling products but how to deliver consistent experiences across borders.” One Hermès client wished to collect the brand’s five global store-cover notebooks, and it was remembered by her sales associate, who sourced the Faubourg edition at the Paris flagship. The gesture showed how the relationship extended across borders rather than ending at her local store. Asia’s UHNWIs live between cities, not in them. For Slater’s members, the point is portability: “The individuals I work with are not living in one place. They are in Milan in April, London in May, New York in June, back to Asia, then somewhere else entirely. What they want is not a club in a city but a trusted social infrastructure that travels with them,” she says. Deep personalization: Money-can’t-buy experiences The VIC playbook is outdated. Top clients want authorship — an experience built around exactly who they are. “A monogrammed gift bag is not personalization,” adds Slater. Knowing that a member has spent six months trying to reach a specific type of investor and engineering that meeting casually over dinner — that is personalization. The question driving Asian UHNW travelers, Cagliani observes, is no longer what counts as luxurious but what is genuinely rare and meaningful to them. Brands are moving the same way. The retail expert at Hermès notes, “Two key dimensions: personalization and meaningful surprise. Understanding clients at a deeper level, including their preferences, cultural backgrounds, and emotional drivers are becoming fundamental.” Young Asian HNWIs: Where the trend goes next The shift is arriving earliest among young, wealthy Asians. Asian UHNW clients are increasingly appearing in their late 30s and 40s — already highly informed and expecting to engage in cultural dialogue rather than be lectured to. “The evolution from luxury as a product to luxury as a form of knowledge and access is occurring earlier and more rapidly within the Asian UHNW segment than in any other market,” Cagliani says. The depth of engagement previous generations pursued later in life is now being sought decades earlier. That points to a structural change. Access itself is being redefined: no longer simply entry to places others cannot reach, but access that is intellectual and relational — to knowledge, to context, and to the people who preserve it. For Europe’s luxury houses, that is the signal worth reading: the audience defining access as the product is young, Asian, and arriving on its own.

From Birkin to a seat: Luxury’s new scarcity play

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag

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From Birkin to a seat: Luxury’s new scarcity play

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag