World Luxury Day: What Luxury Really Means Today | SA Decor

For World Luxury Day on 8 October, Marcia Margolius considers what luxury really means today, from fashion, interiors and wonderful food to craftsmanship, personal style and that increasingly precious commodity: time.

Where does a love of luxury begin?

Marcia sometimes thinks hers started with fashion. There is something about an extraordinary fabric, a beautifully cut jacket or one tiny, perfectly judged detail that can completely change the way something looks, and, more importantly, the way it makes a person feel.

But then again, perhaps it started around a table.

Wonderful food, beautiful glassware, generous hospitality and conversation that continues long after the plates have been cleared can feel every bit as luxurious as something with an impressive price tag. For Marcia, that is where luxury becomes interesting. It isn’t necessarily about extravagance. It is about thought, atmosphere and the pleasure of something being done really well.

And then, of course, there are interiors.

As an interior designer, Marcia has spent much of her life thinking about the spaces people inhabit and why some rooms stay with them long after they have left them. She has realised that the most memorable are rarely those filled with the most expensive things. They’re the ones with personality.

A fabulous chair might sit beside something discovered on a journey. Art is there because somebody fell in love with it, not because it matched the sofa. There are beautiful linens, books that have actually been read, flowers cut from the garden and perhaps a table that has acquired a few marks along the way.

That, to Marcia, is luxury.

The thread between beautiful things

Fashion, interiors and food might seem like very different worlds, but they are connected by the same instinct: discernment.

A great fashion designer understands proportion, texture, colour and movement. An interior designer works with much the same language, only on a different scale. A brilliant chef thinks about seasonality, provenance, balance and presentation.

And behind all of them is the human hand.

Think about the embroiderer who spends days completing a detail that might only be noticed for a moment, or the cabinetmaker who understands exactly how to work with the grain of a piece of timber. There is the ceramicist whose fingerprints remain almost imperceptibly in the finished object and the chef who knows precisely when a simple ingredient is at its best.

We live at a time when almost anything can be reproduced quickly, which perhaps makes craftsmanship more precious than ever.

Knowing who made something, where it came from and why it was created adds another layer to it. There is a story there, and that can give an object a richness that its price alone never could.

Luxury looks a little different today

The meaning of luxury has certainly changed during Marcia’s lifetime.

There was a time when it was much easier to recognise through obvious symbols: the right label, the grand address, an impressive car or an expensive object. Those things may still have their place, but some of the most interesting expressions of modern luxury today are much quieter.

Luxury can be space.

It can be privacy and time. A beautifully made object you’ll keep for decades. An exceptional meal shared with people you love. A hotel that remembers how you take your coffee. A home that reflects the people living there rather than whatever happens to be trending.

And increasingly, luxury is having the freedom – and confidence – to choose fewer things, but better things.

There is something wonderful about restraint. Anyone can add another object to a room. The real skill is knowing when it has enough.

Make it personal

Perhaps this is also why the best interiors never feel as though they were bought in a single afternoon.

They evolve.

Something contemporary sits beside something inherited. A precious artwork hangs above a wonderfully worn table. A piece bought in Paris somehow looks completely at home beside something found at a market in Cape Town.

Perfection has never interested Marcia as much as personality.

A home should tell you something about the person who lives there. And she thinks fashion works in much the same way. Personal style isn’t about wearing every important label at once. It comes from knowing yourself well enough to understand what belongs to you.

Food is no different. Some of the greatest meals of our lives aren’t necessarily the most elaborate. We remember them because everything came together – the place, the people, the flavours, the generosity and the moment.

Luxury is deeply emotional. People remember how something made them feel.

Quality, authenticity and emotion

If Marcia had to define luxury in three words, they would be quality, authenticity and emotion.

Quality, because true luxury should endure.

Authenticity, because beauty without integrity eventually feels empty.

And emotion, because the things people treasure most are rarely important to them simply because they were expensive. They hold onto them because they connect them to a person, a place, an experience or a particular moment in their lives.

That is why Marcia doesn’t think luxury can ever be defined purely by price.

It might be an extraordinary piece of furniture made by a master craftsman. But it could just as easily be fresh flowers beside the bed, sunlight falling across a beautiful room, an afternoon with nowhere else to be or dinner at home with people you adore.

The common denominator is intention.

Someone cared. Someone noticed the detail. Someone took the time.

And on World Luxury Day this 8 October, perhaps that is what is worth celebrating. Not luxury simply as possession, but the pleasure of recognising excellence – in craftsmanship, creativity, beauty, generosity and time.

Because ultimately, luxury isn’t about having more.

It is about knowing what is truly worth having.