Naturally luxurious

At the turn of the century, personal symbols of luxury and social status were a capitalist’s fantasy. A Cartier love bracelet (or a stack of 7), a brand-new Rolex, a Range Rover or G-Wagon, a good injector, even a luxury logo monogrammed tracksuit would do the trick. All the above – and you had an impenetrable presentation of wealth, officially and undeniably upper echelon. The trend in luxury consumerism has grown exponentially from 2000 to today*. By 2021, the type of mainstream luxury consumerism had evolved from loud brand iconography to a focus on silent luxury and minimalist branding. Primarily attributable to the evolution in the late 2010s, when these same luxury items were plagued by the fake luxury fashion industry, which transformed the same logos that were once a symbol of wealth into a representative of the equivalent of any item someone could buy in a corner store. Being rich became a marketable concept focused on a person's appearance, rather than the specific goods they possessed.

At the same time, society underwent one of the most concentrated periods of technification in our history. By 2022, the first easily accessible generative AI platform, ‘Chat-GPT’, was launched, gaining over 100 million users in its first two months*. Almost instantly, ingenious innovation was integrated into our personalised experience with technology, even more so than anyone anticipated outside of the Silicon Valley atmosphere. Since then, we have seen immense investment in the continued integration of society with technology, including but not limited to using AI in place of task-specific jobs*. AI is even capable of creating fake influencers on social media, generating images and videos that are often nearly indistinguishable from authentic ones. From the back end of businesses to the intimate environment created on our phones, AI and technology have merged significantly into our culture and lives over the past few years, whether we like it or not. Somewhere in your life, AI is powering a task at some point along the way.

In the face of the AI boom, with access to a previously unfathomable amount of resources available to anyone with an internet connection and a device, the ability to distance oneself from the other end of the spectrum - finding it yourself - has become the new luxury. A departure from consumerist, item-based luxury, and an emergence into a self-sufficient lifestyle as the ultimate luxury experience.

It started most distinctly in 2024 with the ‘Ballerina Farms’ ‘trad-wife’ controversy surrounding her family's homesteading lifestyle, and has now evolved into a romanticised concept cultivated into a part of the luxury brand worldbuilding. Marketing campaigns for brands featuring farm-core imagery reached an all-time high over the past summer season, with numerous campaigns from luxury brands incorporating farm iconography into their content and products. From using barns and farm animals as background props, down to selling custom embroidered linen napkins, for example. Jacquemus’ recent collaboration with Veuve Clicquot is the purest example of this, using a farm field with uniformed maids as the basis of the ad for the new branded bottle, identifiable by its packaging -an embroidered white linen napkin. In their recent summer campaign, Loewe used a traditional vegetable garden as its inspiration, even going so far as making a ‘tomato clutch’. Meanwhile, Burberry collaborated with Highgrove (the private country residence of King Charles) in a May capsule collection.

The unindustrial lifestyle has become recognisable among the wealthy, who are moving their families to large plots of rural land or actual working farms. It has even permeated pop culture, as if a sign of absolute luxury is having the ability to escape back in time, before technology, without all the mundane assistance that comes with living your life surrounded by technology. Justin Bieber’s campaign art for his new album, for example, entirely revolved around the rural lifestyle with his new family. Or the mass influx of celebrities suddenly making produce in their new vast vegetable gardens and posting it on social media. Except living a ‘farm core’ centred life, where one romanticises the unindustrialised life, is extremely expensive.

There is a reason governments subsidise farms – they are incredibly financially taxing to upkeep, particularly when you are an agricultural farmer. In 2024, the U.S. government provided $9.3 billion USD in subsidy payments*, while farmers in France receive €7.7 billion in direct payments from the EU, annually*. These payments ensure that farmers are protected against crop failures, drought, floods, and cattle movements, while also providing income support. Without government support, farms across the world would struggle to make a profit. Romanticising farm life and ‘living off the land’ has evolved from an anecdotal inspiration for content online into a silent icon of affluence. Nothing whispers silent luxury like personal agriculture because the ultimate luxury is time. Having an absence of the need to spend your days working in employment, and instead investing in something that is an endless expense - a private working farm.

As we submerge ourselves in the technification of our everyday lives and society more broadly, what has become and will continue to be the ultimate sign of autonomy, freedom, and wealth is the ability to distance oneself from the reliance on easily accessible technology that the lower and middle classes often rely on for opportunities and employment. In its modest form, it could mean that the valuation of our environment and authentic human creation will not be lost. The opportunities technology provides will allow for leisure in natural experiences, rather than the other way around. Alternatively, presenting a lifestyle cultivated from ‘living off the land’ or ‘farm core’ could be the new cultural indicator of wealth. Having access to and the ability to foster the growth of resources, while society continues to integrate with technology.

References

1 McKinsey & Company. (2025). The state of luxury: How to navigate a slowdown. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/state-of-luxury

2 Marr, B. (2023, May 19). A short history of ChatGPT: How we got to where we are today. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2023/05/19/a-short-history-of-chatgpt-how-we-got-to-where-we-are-today/

3 World Economic Forum. (2025, May). AI agents are revolutionizing administration for businesses. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/05/how-ai-agents-are-driving-the-administrative-revolution/

4 USAFacts. (2025, June 23). Federal farm subsidies: What the data says. USAFacts. https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-data-says/

5 Loyat, J. (2019). Agriculture atlas: The biggest beneficiary. ARC2020. https://www.arc2020.eu/agriculture-atlas-biggest-beneficiary/