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Or part of what I’ve been working on, anyway:

Today HalogenLife.com goes live.  It is, to just come right out and say it, a luxury lifestyle blog.  (One of my clients, HalogenNetwork, approached me months ago about  re-doing their luxury travel site and this is what I recommended.)

But in this economy, even mentioning the word “luxury” is taboo.  Luxury retail is getting hammered and it’ll probably get worse before it gets better. So why do it?

1) I can launch on April Fool’s Day and enjoy the irony.

2) If it’s not challenging, it’s not interesting.

3) Luxury doesn’t mean what it used to mean.  The target reader for this site has $150K in household income (HHI).  In the rest of the country, that’s a ton of money.  Where I grew up, it would buy you a small McMansion.  In New York, however, $150K is probably the average HHI for a two-income couple in their late 30s working in a creative industry and renting in Brooklyn.  If you asked that couple if they considered themselves luxury consumers, they’d probably say no.  But they are.

They’ll probably buy a Prius, but they’ll consider purchasing a Lexus hybrid, and compare the two rigorously before making a decision.  They may not spend summers in Cap d’Antibes, but they’ll carefully plan and research a two week vacation in South Africa, which they can do because they have the financial resources and the vacation time.   They’re not—generally speaking—materialists, but they are aesthetes and they appreciate well-crafted, well-designed objects. They’ll spend money to learn new things, save time and be more efficient. Luxury, for them, is not primarily about acquisitiveness. It’s about experience, quality of life and control over one’s own time.

Which is fitting, as they say, in this economy.

And that’s where I think the luxury market is going, ultimately. Traditional luxury retailers are weakening as consumers care less and less about the cache afforded by recognizable—and supposedly exclusive—brands, and they have to offer their customers more than just the promise of high-status items that may or may not appreciate over time.  There’s more awareness of the social responsibilities that come with consumption decisions and everyone is looking for value—and not just in the quality-to-price-point-ratio sense.

And it’ll probably stay that way.  Asset bubbles are easy to blow, but I don’t expect 2006 excesses to re-appear anytime soon.

So we’re keeping those things in mind as we try to execute an editorial plan that works in an already tough category (but one that’s changing very quickly and in an interesting way).  It’ll be fun to see what works and what doesn’t. I expect some surprises. In the meantime, drop by the site, and if you have any suggestions, feel free to email me (ESPIERS at GMAIL) or HalogenLife’s brand new editor, Kyle Anderson. (You can reach Kyle at KYLE at HALOGENLIFE dotcom.)