How Quiet Luxury is Inviting Us to Rethink
A person's desire to appear attractive is often motivated by the desire to receive approval from others. For some people who wish to enhance their social status through the things they use, luxurious brands have become a way of life. This tendency pushes individuals to strive for luxury things, sometimes without understanding the item's design and intention. Most consumers only know how the luxury brands' brand mark will (hopefully) gain attention and approval. People then seek items that explicitly show those brand marks as loud as possible.
We’ve been in a trend where brandmark becomes a type of beauty. Repetition of the logo or the use of a huge one that almost covers all surfaces appear in collections. But then, the chase for markings creates opportunities for fakes to thrive. People started to become more tolerant of fakes to buy them for the sake of fast social approval. People also become too indifferent when they see brand markings, authentic or not.
After the pandemic and the frenzy of this brand-marking trend have passed, plus the realization of the need for a more sustainable lifestyle, there has been a rising interest in the “quietness” that carries substance, such as high-quality craftsmanship and stories with deep tradition. It veered away from the tendencies toward loud requests for attention. It places more emphasis on tradition, quality, and craftsmanship than on exhibiting social class or status. Because after all those lockdowns, bad news about the environment, etcetera, it seems we’re now looking for a connection—between ourselves, our surroundings, and our activities, formed through stories. The coming trend of quiet luxury is the thirst quencher for those needs. How can that be possible?
Loro Piana S/S Collection 2020, Image by Karim Sadli
Quiet Luxury is a lifestyle trend where substance matters most. The 10,000 hours of craft, the months-long process, the wild harvests, and seasonal produce are some of the essences of the trend. Those are the building blocks for items that fall under the Quiet Luxury trend, and those aspects are the things that can be portrayed by looking more intently and listening deeply to the stories each item tells.
With this trend, it’s harder to know when a woman strolling comfortably wearing a white t-shirt and black sneakers wears a t-shirt with the finest cotton and sneakers made with sustainably harvested cowhide. Her basic, plain clothing does not draw notice at all. This woman seems unconcerned with how others perceive her based on her appearance. After all, approval is not something she needs. She feels perfectly comfortable due to these high-quality items, which is all that matters.
Image by Polene
Maybe her clothes are Jill Sander’s and Loro Piana’s, but to truly know what she wears, you must get closer, share each other's stories, and appreciate each other’s preferences. This approach is how far Quiet Luxury can bring people to connect. It may, at some point, gather people into a community of itself. Quiet luxury is an appreciation for those who know how to appreciate substance over acknowledgment. The idea of quiet luxury emphasizes how a product's quality is its primary value. The finest materials elevate the product to a new level of luxury. Those who know that acknowledgment will come anyway after the quality of the substance is proven.
Some brands have excelled and been known players in Quiet Luxury for some time—for example, Loro Piana. There are also top-rated luxury brands that started to become more “quiet,” such as Louis Vuitton. Some other players positioned themselves in the Quiet Luxury field as a brand that sells quality rather than popularity, such as the Parisian bag maker, Polène.
But Quiet Luxury can go as far as unbranded items bought from artisans in a remote village in Japan or furniture brands from Jakarta such as AlvinT.
In the case of Polène, the brand was founded by two brothers and one daughter who wanted their label to seem intimate, featuring a limited number of releases. To maintain the exclusivity of their bags, they don't mass produce them. Each item is like giving birth to a brand-new creation. Once a product is sold out, Polène will stop making it.
Polène pays close attention to all elements of material utilization. Each bag is delicately hand-finished, and the iron element of the bag is manufactured using Zamak, a thread utilized in the manufacturing process and made in France by Gutterman. The best craftsmen in Spain handcraft each of Polène's bags. The works of Madam Gras, Mariano Fortuny, and Madeleine Vionnet are all sources of inspiration for Polène. The three were renowned designers from the 1920s who each contributed fresh breakthroughs to the design field. These ideas were values that Polène wished to uphold.
Sangga by AlvinT x Saniharto, Image by Alvin Tjitrowirjo
Meanwhile, for AlvinT, we can be a part of the Quiet Luxury lifestyle because our brand values are driven by awareness of craft and intention. We’re proud to produce a well-thought object that speaks of admiration towards craft and materials. Choosing a material and considering the crafting process is comparable to how we play a role and transform it into an answer to the world’s issue we choose to face. Above all, our creation is always a story to tell.
For example, our Linger Bench and other rattan-based furniture we’ve created. Beyond its function that allows people to gather, linger, and interact, the story of how we select and process the rattan is what we choose as our vehicle to connect to one another—how it has always been one of Indonesian cultural heritage and how Linger is differently structured compared to other commonly found rattan furniture.
Linger at Kalimaya Residence
“I believe that the furniture that we make is a physical embodiment of the values that we believe,” Alvin Tjitrowirjo, the founder and creative director, said in his interview with Tatler Asia. “When we design an object, we allow the material to participate in the design process. Understanding the character of the material and doing the design work with the material is important for us. We want to appreciate the material’s traditions from the past and integrate that into the design carefully.” We want to portray local luxury by means of exploring rattan. This intention inspires us to modify undesirable perceptions of Rattan as an undervalued material that many regards as inferior owing to its presence in Southeast Asia.
"Rattan is such a beautiful material; it's flexible and grows quickly in a rainforest and can be transformed into high-value furniture pieces, but no one is doing anything about it," Alvin said. The distinctive quality of ratan will enable craftspeople to experiment freely with shapes. This necessitates dedication on behalf of both the designer and the artisans. The process, which takes 12-14 weeks, enhances how luxury differentiates itself from how a product shows subtle brilliance, resulting in the Linger Bench being a high-value piece of furniture.
Previously, stories—a huge part of a tradition—are drowned out by a parade of various products seeking attention, each louder than before. It isn't always an unfavorable development, but when it becomes the norm, the substance of the actual value is lost since people don't have time to absorb the subtle details of the thing they are buying. The quiet luxury comes at the right moment, letting us step back and re-interpret the meaning of things we chased through connecting better.
