Sure, you can always spend a fortune trying to sell your self into a lifestyle that you read about in the pages of magazines, but truly, the most authentic luxury lifestyle is the one that you curate for yourself, through time, hard work, and intuition.

I first realized my passion for luxury while working the retail scene at department stores in Southern California. I was hired in the handbags department at the local shopping mall, covering fine jewelry, watches, and designer purses. I took a natural inclination to this work, and began organizing the showcase counters for a more visually pleasing aesthetic, and then our collective back-stock area for greater ease and practicality. I took great pride in developing my immediate environment and my own work, making it easier not only for myself to navigate our shelves, but also inspiring my peers to go the extra mile in caring for the product.

This sense of pride translated over to those we were there to serve — our clients. Because I had organized my back-stock room to be more efficient, I developed a coding system akin to a library dewey decimal system where we could simply read the SKU code to know which item was which. When the client made their final selection, we cross referenced our system to see if we had it available in back-stock still encased in it’s original packaging, excused ourselves for a moment, and then returned with the product in hand, untouched and unopened

In closing, I want to return to the idea that real luxury is hard work. For many, it imparts the idea of ease, comfort, and leisure, and yes, it is all that, but it’s the work behind the scenes that makes it look easy on the surface. Because that is the point of luxury. If there weren’t so many people working behind the scenes to bring you the finest product made of the most exclusive materials from around the world, why would anyone want it? Why would they choose to spend their hard earned cash on something that hadn’t been meticulously laid out, made to measure, thought out and conceptualized to their deepest heart’s desire?

It’s time to redefine luxury to make it not only more accessible in theory, but also to demystify it’s purpose, and understand why there is value in the making. It’s not an image on a page, a runway model, or a celebrity on a red carpet somewhere. It’s about you — the Client.