I recently attended a New York event hosted by Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) announcing their link with Faberge.
I think the message was… if you are into luxury this is your cruise line.
Faberge Brand is Provocative
The House of Faberge is controversial. In 1885 the brand’s name was equated with both opulence and scandal. While the majority of the Russian population struggled to feed their children, the imperial family lived in luxury, with the gifting of eggs becoming an annual occurrence. Each year the tsar tasked the House of Faberge to design new creations that had to be both beautiful and playful. In 1898 he gave one Lily of the Valley egg to his wife, Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, and another to his mother as Easter gifts. The current value of each egg is US $13 million.
The opulent ornaments were symbolic of how out of touch and oblivious the Romanovs were in their final decades of power. The unpopular Tsarina Alexandra refused to court the Russian public and explained to her grandmother, Queen Victoria, that it was not “necessary to earn the love of the people” because the royal family were already divine beings.
image courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lilies_of_the_Valley_%28Fabergé_egg%29
In 2004, the Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, placed his large collection of eggs in the Faberge Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Vekselberg has a close relationship with the Kremlin and was implicated in investigations of election meddling in the 2016 USA presidential elections.
Oligarch, Alexander Ivanov, developed the Faberge Museum in Germany which was raided by British law enforcement a week before Vladimir Putin was due to gift the Rothschild Egg to the Hermitage. The investigators claimed the museum failed to pay a tax on objects bought over the prior 15 years in London. Ivanov lent part of the collection to the Hermitage to put on exhibition (2021). However, it was reported that a London art dealer contacted the Hermitage criticizing them for the exhibition of the eggs as 40 percent of the artefacts were fake.
What is Luxury? Then/Now
image courtesy of wikipedia
In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, luxury is equated with lust, originating from the Latin word LUXURIA meaning extravagance. In the Elizabethan Era (1558-1603), luxury was associated with adultery and morphed into a lifestyle that focused on opulence and splendor. Luxury required money and lots of it. Luxury requires the engagement of all the senses – visual, auditive and tactile as well as smell. A few countries lead the luxury space with German products ranked highest for quality (Statista), while Italy is considered the strongest in design with Switzerland is noted for all luxury products and services.
Today the luxury focus is frequently associated with what money cannot buy such as freedom.
Research at Cornell University suggests that luxury is currently equated with experiences rather than material things. Consumers seem to prefer accessible luxury as opposed to conspicuous consumption, selecting excellent customer service combined with fun while affluent consumers continue to appreciate free shipping and personal shoppers; however, the newest focus is on technology and contemporary design.
