Cultural Capital by Guy Salter OBE MVO

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What have the ups and downs of the past decade taught us about London’s luxury market?

Guy Salter ► Guy Salter OBE MVO is a long-standing specialist retailer and investor. His pro-bono work includes founding London Craft Week, the GREAT Britain Campaign, and 19 years with Walpole, including establishing the Crafted programme in 2007.

Illustration ► Ana Yael

GUY SALTER

Cultural Capital

Déjà vu but different. An inelegant way to sum up how things feel now compared to this time ten years ago, when the 2012 London Olympics were on the horizon. Then, as now, I felt a significant opportunity within touching distance. Albeit one that could easily slip away from us.

In 2011, my itchiness was around how the UK could take advantage of those millions of eyeballs and visitors to boost our reputation and business. Now it’s about how we shore up and rebuild. Then I saw an important role for the luxury sector. Now is the same.

The differences are self-evident and 2012 seems a world away. A distant era of optimism, when the UK seemed more at ease straddling old and new, sure-footedly navigating East and West. Europeans envied us and spent their euros here, as did Americans their dollars and Chinese their yuan. The Arab Spring was still warm. Pre-Covid, Trump, Brexit.

Then I felt the worst that could happen is we shot ourselves in the foot by missing or fumbling that moment. Now, my sense of urgency is more about saving ourselves. And those who rely on us to be stewards. Whether, after everything we’ve been through, we can seize the day with sufficient vision, ambition and panache.

Maybe, though, there is more similarity in the mood now and then. It’s easy to forget that we were downbeat about the chances of us pulling off the Olympics. And little sense we were living in good times, especially given the post-financial crisis austerity. National self-doubt was its usual drag on positive thinking.

The one thing most of us felt we were getting right then was London. It seemed to symbolise our most optimistic vision of what we could become and our place in the world. More confident, more diverse, a creative and commercial powerhouse with global pulling power. This feeling was shared by many others, others who matter, as evidenced by numbers of students, visitors and investors. To say nothing of those who chose London for product launches, fashion shows, to start up their business, for their HQ or home.

It’s London, and other great cities like it, that encapsulate both a pressing opportunity and a challenge. One that our sector can do much to influence and contribute to – and get the greatest return from.

Without people, a city becomes pointless. So much, so self-evident. But nonetheless starkly illustrated by shuttered shops and empty streets. During the bleakest mid points of our lockdowns, I was struck by how we were existing on the thin gruel of memory for all those urban-based, life-enhancing, simple pleasures we’d taken for granted, from a Monmouth espresso sipped in the early summer sun to an ethereal experience at the Royal Opera House. With those worst of times receding, maybe the best we can do is repair our balance sheets, adjust our business model, hope that the consumer spends that hoarded up cash and time – and our cities will look after themselves, bouncing back along with everything else. Certainly there’s no doubting the deep resilience of world-standard urban centres. London has not only survived far worse but gone on to thrive every time.

But I wonder if we are as wellequipped as our forebears to play our part this time round. After all, cities don’t mend themselves, that falls to us citizens. Does civic pride, a sense of what we could do and why come as naturally to us as the Victorians? They, and their predecessors, needed no urging to invest in not just palatial town halls but museums, galleries, broad avenues, public parks, concert halls and much else. Assets that have become so much a part of our urban fabric that their enduring value easily gets taken for granted. They did this not just for their cities and communities but for themselves, their families and their businesses. Not a complicated Corporate Social Responsibility-type formula, just a simple investment. Like planting a tree. As straightforward as a nonfungible token isn’t.

Maybe we need to take a leaf or two from their playbook. This might seem unnecessary and not our role these days. Especially when governments, national and local, to say nothing of influential commentators and non-governmental organisations, have been vocal about the future of our cities and prolix with multiple theories and solutions long before the pandemic. If some of the more imaginative and practical of these come to pass, especially on mobility, air quality and greening, so very good. But the waxing and waning of cycle lanes over the past year, to say nothing of a straightened exchequer may not bode well. Plus ten years ago, London’s growth and vitality were universally accepted to be good for us all; now it seems more contentious. In other words, this time it may be best not to rely on others but help ourselves.

Our industry is especially well placed to play a part. Not just because each of our brands’ DNA is infused with national and cultural values, but super-healthy city centres, even with fountain, or create a new one. London is overdue a leap forward in its contemporary public artwork, too clogged with pre-Covid, developerfunded, councillor-approved fare. Think another Fourth Plinth-type space. Not that this need be a grand, centrally based statement – our neighbourhoods often offer much greater potential.

Clearly we all have different aims, aspirations and budgets. To say nothing of having had worse or better pandemics. Most of us are already engaged, especially with our communities. The bigger luxury groups, their foundations and the families behind them, have been doing a lot for years, often without fanfare or thanks. For giving is no longer as straightforward as it was, as evidenced by the Notre Dame blowback. Plus no business wants to look like it is following others or only reacting to fashion or pressure. But a focus on our home city or neighbourhood, on something natural and unforced, at whatever level of ambition is possible, is hopefully achievable.

Ten years ago not only did we surprise ourselves with a brilliant Olympics but we developed the GREAT campaign, in which the creative industries, including the luxury sector, had a starring role that continues to this day. In March 2020 a number of us developed some super-short-term responses to the burgeoning crisis but face-mask or hand-sanitiser production was bound to be marginal. Now we can play a more meaningful and longerterm role, albeit one that is more bottom up, home grown and diverse, rather than government-led. One that is well suited to what we do best when the chips are down. Every so often our brands need a creative jab in the arm. Our great cities have nurtured us for decades, now it is they who need an injection of cultural capital.

fewer physical stores, remain vital to our futures. Hands up anyone who disagrees. What’s the point of buying beautiful things if there is nowhere to wear or display them? Or treat your loved ones to world-class theatre, gastronomy or art? Luxury thrives as part of a wider cultural universe in which a determination to live life to the full is everything.

Here are three suggestions of the sort of thing we could do now, together and individually. Firstly, a big thought, a coalition of all those businesses, institutions, public and private, who have a stake in not just a revival but a renaissance. Do what we have never done before and work together, rather than in silos, with the simple aim of generating more activity and spending. The practical focus would be on joining the dots between our individual efforts, so we optimise both London’s attractiveness and diversity of experiences, especially ensuring choice, stickiness and sufficient high points in the calendar. Success would be more of the right type of people, more of the time. And managing this in a low-cost, peer-to-peer way, so the coalition grew if it worked – and faded away if it didn’t.

Secondly, we each develop one initiative that aims to enrich our municipal culture, ideally over a number of years. One that is a natural extension of our brand’s raison d’être. And of our physical retail, so we can become more integrated into and active in our local communities. Ideally this creates or adds something new, even if an evolution of what we are doing now. La Maison LVMH will no doubt do exactly that for Paris. Chanel’s Culture Fund is less about one place but potentially just as powerful.

Thirdly, adopt one public monument or a part of our built heritage that is endangered and needs some love to bring it back to life, as Fendi did with the Trevi

Luxury thrives as part of a wider cultural universe in which a determination to live life to the full is everything. There’s no doubting the deep resilience of world-standard urban centres. London has not only survived far worse but gone on to thrive every time.