Luxury is dead. Long live luxury

FOR DECADES, LUXURY brands had mastered the art of the sale. The precise calibrations of product design, store layout, careful lighting, piped-in music and professional staff kept you lingering, gazing, craving and eventually pulling out your wallet or purse.

But today even high-end malls look like mini-airports. There are layers of checks and security, zigzag queues around ubiquitous stanchions, staff and signages telling you where to go, and frequent safety announcements on the PA system. When you approach an individual store within the mall, this ritual has to be repeated, as if you're now going through the boarding gate.

All this is anathema to luxury, which thrives on creating exquisite environments to transport you to consumer heaven. Face masks, hand sanitisers and no-touch thermometers now commonplace in every store are generating fraught, unsettling reminders that your body is fragile and susceptible to illness.