Privacy Is the Ultimate Luxury

When will more brands figure out how to capitalize on this?

Happy New Year, Back Rowers! I hope you all got some nice time off and survived the dreaded January return to work. Back Row is now back to its regular posting schedule. I’m returning from a couple of weeks off with my family, including my two kids and three of my nephews. We did tourist-y stuff in NYC and then headed to Vermont for a few days, most of them unseasonably warm and rainy. I had virtually no time or energy to really “be online.” When my daughter napped and I caught a break, I read books.

Vermont, but in the spirit of privacy: not my trip. Photo by Emily Ho on Unsplash

Not being on email or social media nearly as much as usual was fantastic. When I found myself reflexively opening Instagram on my phone, I quickly closed it, realizing I didn’t have any desire to post about what I was doing or subject myself to dribs and drabs of information about Kardashian Christmas parties or minor celebrities who happened to be in St. Barths for New Year’s Eve.

My feelings on vacation and social media are hardly unique. Research shows that vacations make people happier, while social media makes people less happy. But it got me thinking about how luxurious it felt to have an almost totally offline experience, to be subsumed by family activities instead of desperate internet noise. (I realize I’m lucky in that I genuinely enjoy being with my family.)

This helps explain, I’d argue, why stealth wealth/quiet luxury will shape up to be one of the decade’s enduring trends, as I predicted in my last newsletter of 2023. It’s not just about rich people hiding their money in unidentifiable Loro Piana cashmere instead of flaunting it with quilted Chanel bags. The trend also underscores, in a world where theoretically anyone can go on social media and become famous, that a private life is the ultimate luxury. As technology makes our lives less and less private, privacy will become a commodity, and consumers will gravitate toward brands that know how to sell it.

10 Fashion Predictions for 2024

Currently, roughly 60 percent of the global population and 93 percent of all internet users are on social media. While many only use social platforms in a personal capacity and many have private accounts, social media is not optional for lots of professionals. For some, this amounts to maintaining nothing more than a LinkedIn account. For others, this amounts to regularly posting on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and more. This is especially true in professions like mine, which require online audiences. Many creatives — graphic designers, fashion designers, actors, you name it — rely on social media just to get their names and faces and work seen.

If social media has expanded access exponentially to a single scarce resource, it’s fame. Instagram opened the door for aesthetically minded people to become famous for being famous, while TikTok has enabled just about everyone else to be famous for just about anything: climate researchers in Antarctica, New York City foodies, private chefs for billionaires, expert thrifters, and mini cow owners can all attract massive followings on social media.

Attention doesn’t just sate a primal need human beings have from childhood to be seen and acknowledged, attention is also money, with some content creators commanding annual salaries of six and seven figures.

But — what if you didn’t have to be seen? What if you were so financially secure that you don’t need a traditional job or fame — and all its downsides, ranging from trolls to backlash to cancellation — to enjoy a fortune? What if you were able to be wealthy without ever telling an online audience about anything you did?

Being completely unfindable and stealth feels more rarified than being, even if not famous, just public in some way. Imagine you met someone at a party and wanted to find them later on social media, only to search and turn up no trace of them online. That would feel weirder than digging up just one barely used private account.

If luxury goods derive value from scarcity, and true privacy is scarce, privacy is luxury. I predict that the next big luxury brand will figure out how to leverage the idea of privacy. Their strength will not be in gimmicks, like Coperni’s icky clothing-snatching robots, but whisper campaigns. Telfar is one IYKYK brand that has done this well with its Circle Bag drops. Other top brands have no shortage of ideas about how to draw attention to what they’re doing, from Balenciaga’s $925 towel skirt to Schiaparelli’s couture faux animal heads. In fact, most such brands shout at us constantly through runway shows, ad campaigns, and paid celebrity placements, all designed to pop on Instagram or TikTok.

Opportunity lies in doing the opposite, in putting the “stealth” in stealth wealth.

In 2010, I covered Tom Ford’s first women’s ready-to-wear collection for The Cut. His men’s line was already doing well, and I remember months of feverish speculation about the women’s debut. As a lowly blogger, I didn’t get invited to the show, but that was the whole point. Twitter was the hot social network and still in its early days, and self-promotion was starting to take on all-new meaning. Yet Ford banned recording devices, hired celebrities including Beyoncé and Julianne Moore to model the collection, and held a show at his Madison Avenue store where he personally described each outfit. The world didn’t even get to see the clothes until they appeared in Vogue months later, images of the full collection following from there.

Ford eased into a more traditional show format after that. And last year, more than a decade after that first show, he sold the brand to Estée Lauder for $2.8 billion.

But something else appeals about that Ford show, particularly in retrospect. To experience it, you had to have been there. Physically been there. You couldn’t lurk on YouTube for a livestream or open TikTok before bed for a recap. Today, when do you really have to be somewhere? So many of fashion’s so-called most exclusive and private events, ranging from couture shows to the Met Gala to influencer trips, are all made so readily available for monetizable consumption online that no one really has to be invited anywhere to experience anything. This year, Apple’s forthcoming mixed reality headset might provide a whole new way for people to experience fashion virtually.

Consumers will increasingly want an escape from tech, the pressure it puts on us, and the ridiculous marketing its platforms spew into the world like a geyser. They will pay for the chance to experience something that is divorced from all of it, that feels like a vacation, instead of the thing they need a vacation from.