Everyone wants to know how to build a career in luxury.
They study brands, improve their CVs, learn marketing tools, follow fashion news, and prepare for interviews. These things matter. But they are rarely enough to explain why some people become truly valuable in luxury while others remain interchangeable.
Former LVMH North America Chairwoman Pauline Brown offers an interesting answer: develop your taste.
Taste, however, is not simply knowing expensive brands or following the latest fashion trends. It is the ability to recognise what feels right, understand why it works, and develop a point of view.
In luxury, this ability matters because the business is not driven only by function. People do not buy luxury simply because they need another bag, watch, fragrance, or jacket. They buy into stories, emotions, symbols, craftsmanship, identity, and desire.
To understand this business, therefore, requires more than technical skills.
It requires cultural literacy.
Someone who wants to work in luxury should understand more than what appeared on Instagram this morning. They should know the history of brands, creators, art, architecture, film, culture, and the changing world around them. The most interesting ideas often come from outside the immediate world of fashion.
But taste alone is not enough.
Technical skills still matter. Marketing, finance, strategy, digital tools, and business knowledge create professional value. The difference is that skills can increasingly be learned, automated, or supported by technology. Judgment and perspective are harder to replace.
This may become even more important in the age of AI.
Technology can help us analyse information, organise work, and solve problems. But when everything begins to sound and look the same, a genuine human point of view becomes more valuable.
Perhaps the goal is not to reject technology or chase every new trend.
It is to develop something technology cannot easily create: a deeper understanding of yourself, culture, people, and what you believe is worth creating.
In luxury, skills may get you into the room.
But taste, curiosity, and a distinctive point of view may be what makes people remember you.
