This is the fourth installment of my weekly commentary on trendwatching.com’s “10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010.” After Business Unusual,Urbany, and Real-Time Reviews, today I bring you (F)LUXURY.

This year, luxury, and what it means to a bewildering number of ‘consumer segments’, will remain in flux.

So how will luxury brands fare over the next 12 months? What will define luxury over the next few years? The answer is ‘luxury will be whatever you want it to be’. After all, what constitutes luxury is closely related to what constitutes scarcity. And, beyond the basic needs, scarcity is in the eye of the beholder, especially those beholders who are desperately trying to be unique. Now that there are so many more ways to be unique than just buy the biggest and the most expensive, how about luxury constituting:

Anything commissioned? Providing ‘access’? Secrets? Stories? Time with one’s loved ones? Time for oneself? All things local? Peace and quiet, if not escape? Eco-friendly? Human-friendly? Animal-friendly? Caring? Empathy? Perks? Craft? Friends? Having a larger-than-life perspective? Households of six or more? An audience? Eccentricity? Appointment-only? Relevant information? Extreme personalization? Not having or wanting to consume? Being opinionated? Anything premium? Fuck-you money? Curation if not the absence of any kind of choice? Philanthropy? Bespoke goods and services? Knowledge? Skills? Frugality? Health? Etiquette & manners? Or a mix of any of these?

I belong to a LinkedIn group called Luxury and Lifestyle Professionals. Most discussions from this group focus on brands and products, which companies retain market share and sales volume. This approach still comes at the question of what is luxury from an outdated mindset that is solely based on the concept of consumption. Occasionally, however, the conversation turns more towards defining what luxury actually means, especially in this changing economy.

The concept of luxury has meant something altogether different for the US consumer than for the European consumer. I’m generalizing, but for a long time Americans grew to think of luxury as something with a big price tag and a recognizable label that would proclaim loudly the elevated status of its owner. Europeans, on the other hand, have traditionally gone for quality over quantity and craftsmanship as opposed to labels. Interestingly enough, one of the effects of the recession and the resulting guilt over consumption was that Americans started to cleave to a more European approach to luxury, whether they realized they were doing it or not. It was no longer chic to display conspicuous wealth, but very much in vogue to wear clothing and accessories that were only recognizable to a rarified audience of consumer cognoscenti – the true afficionado.

From this point of view, luxury equals quality, not scarcity. Maybe the word more appropriate to describe a more contemporary idea of luxury is rarity as opposed to scarcity. Depending on your situation and circumstances, the rare thing that makes you feel good, special, pampered could be anything from a cashmere throw made in Italy you find thrown across your hotel bed to spending a week in a spacious house in the country that gets you away from your tiny city apartment where you hear neighbors and street noise all the time. The luxury is in being able to experience that which for you is rare and therefore meaningful. Beauty, space, time, comfort.

However, if the idea is that the new luxury will be self defined – or at least redefined – this opens up entirely new ways of creating and consuming luxury.

So don’t worry about missing out on the next big thing in luxury, focus on defining it. How? By finding and coining the right (status) trigger for the right audience. Just declare that the end is nigh for anything that’s getting a little too affordable, too accessible, too polluting, or just too well-known. Then introduce something very different (if not the opposite), appealing to the in-crowds who are ready to jump ship anyway.

This is where the debate gets really interesting. It’s so much more exciting to contemplate defining a category or to be the one who creates the next it thing than to simply observe what happens over the next year or so. For those among us with an entrepreneurial spirit who are trying to find a way to come out of this recessionary climate with a new business, service or vocation, thinking about how to offer the consumer a different way to experience luxury seems like a great direction to take.

Look at some of the possible definitions of luxury quoted above. Do any of these spark an idea? Then run with it, create a product and a company with it, market the hell out of it, and suddenly you’ve become the Hermes of 2010.

Next week: Mass Mingling

Source: www.trendwatching.com. One of the world’s leading trend firms, trendwatching.com sends out its free, monthly Trend Briefings to more than 160,000 subscribers worldwide.