Beyond the Price Tag (Part 1)
Somewhere along the way, luxury became a numbers game.
$30,000 handbags. $90,000 watches. $1,500 candles.
The higher the price, the more luxurious it must be—right?
That’s the assumption we’re all exposed to. When you’re crafting a fashion brand, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that price is the defining marker of luxury.
But price is just one piece of the puzzle—luxury goes far beyond the numbers.
While a higher price can signal exclusivity, it isn’t what makes something truly luxurious. The most iconic luxury brands in the world didn’t build their reputations on price tags alone. They built them on identity, story, craftsmanship, and culture.
Here’s the truth most brand founders miss: not all luxury is created equal.
There are different kinds—different strategies, different values, different definitions.
Today, we’re exploring four widely recognized types of luxury brands. This is the first in a series of blogs where we’ll break down all the key categories, helping you understand the full landscape of luxury fashion branding. You’ll see how each category defines value differently—and why knowing these distinctions could shape how your brand positions itself in the world of luxury fashion.
If you’re building a top-tier fashion brand, you need to know where you stand on the map.
1. Heritage Brands
Heritage brands carry the weight of time—anchored in rich histories and skilled craftsmanship handed down through generations. They don’t merely produce items; they preserve time-tested techniques, archival designs, and a legacy of unwavering quality. For them, tradition isn’t a limitation; it’s a culture to be kept alive.
Chopard offers a striking example. At its Fleurier manufacture, the brand resurrected fleurisanne—a nearly extinct 19th-century Swiss engraving technique once used to decorate pocket watches. This painstaking craft involves carving intricate floral or scroll patterns in high relief using a fine chisel under a microscope—a time-intensive process few artisans remembered how to do. To bring it back, Chopard entrusted artisan Nathalie to study century-old watches from its archives and retrain her hands in the forgotten skill. It took over a year before the first results appeared in a limited-edition series—engraved exactly as they would’ve been over a century ago.
This devotion to detail defines heritage brands. They don’t merely reference the past—they restore it, honor it, and make it part of the present. The product becomes more than an object—it becomes a bridge between generations. For the customer, luxury becomes an intimate connection: a way to hold onto stories that might otherwise disappear.
2. Designer Brands
Designer brands define luxury through bold creativity and forward-thinking design. They don’t just respond to culture—they shape it. Their value lies in introducing new aesthetics, silhouettes, and materials that challenge conventions and set the tone for what’s next.
Consider Prada in the 1980s. At a time when luxury meant opulence and traditional fabrics, Miuccia Prada introduced the Vela backpack—crafted from industrial nylon used in military parachutes. It was a radical move. The material was waterproof, ultra-durable, and utilitarian—everything traditional luxury wasn’t. But paired with minimalist design and Prada’s now-iconic triangle logo, it became a symbol of modern luxury: understated, functional, and effortlessly cool.
Designer brands thrive on this tension—between utility and beauty, tradition and rebellion. Gucci, Dior, Balenciaga, and others continually reinvent themselves by blending form and function in ways that feel fresh yet iconic. For those drawn to designer luxury, it’s about daring innovation and standing at the vanguard of fashion’s next wave.
3. Performance Brands
Performance brands aim to master function and push the boundaries of technology in highly specialized fields. True to their name, these brands are driven by one clear goal: maximizing performance. Whether it’s on the racetrack, the tennis court, or deep underwater, their expertise lies in engineering precision, durability, and innovation tailored to meet the unique demands of their niche.
Take ‘On Running’ as a prime example. Traditional running shoes had long relied on heavy materials and multi-layered soles glued together—a design that compromised comfort, limited durability, and generated significant environmental waste. On Running tackled this problem by creating LightSpray technology: a robotic process that sprayed a recyclable thermoplastic directly onto the sole, fusing the upper and sole seamlessly in under three minutes. This breakthrough eliminated glue, cut the shoe’s weight to just 158 grams, and reduced seams—resulting in less irritation and enhanced flexibility for runners.
This wasn’t a minor tweak—it was a radical reinvention of footwear manufacturing. By combining advanced robotics with sustainable materials, On Running delivered peak athletic performance without compromising environmental responsibility. The outcome was a shoe engineered for both elite athletes and eco-conscious consumers, setting a new benchmark in performance luxury.
This relentless focus on innovation perfectly captures what performance brands embody: using cutting-edge technology to push boundaries and elevate the user experience to the highest possible level.
4. Bespoke Brands
Bespoke brands revolve around one defining principle: total personalization. These brands offer experiences meticulously tailored to the individual, built on direct collaboration between the client and the maker. From fit and finish to materials and monograms, every detail is adjusted, refined, and made to measure. The luxury here lies in exclusivity—not just in ownership, but in authorship.
Savile Row tailor Huntsman exemplifies this. When a client commissions a bespoke suit, the process begins with a one-on-one consultation to understand not just measurements, but lifestyle, posture, and personal taste. Over 80 hours of handwork go into each garment, with up to three fittings to ensure every line, shoulder, and seam molds perfectly to the wearer. The result isn’t simply a suit—it’s a second skin, cut to flatter and built to last a lifetime.
This depth of craftsmanship and collaboration transforms the customer’s role from buyer to co-creator. In bespoke luxury, what you wear isn’t just yours—it’s you, made tangible. These brands don’t produce at scale; they produce with intent. And for those who seek meaning behind every stitch, bespoke offers the rarest kind of luxury: one that can’t be replicated.
This overview marks the first part of a series in which we explore the different types of luxury fashion brands. In the next part, we will dive deeper into additional categories, revealing how each brings its own distinct perspective to the world of luxury fashion. But before that, ask yourself—did any of the four categories we discussed today define your luxury fashion brand?
