The Pretzel Riddle: The Cultural Concepts in Luxury

Opening the summer issue of German Vogue, I stumbled across a high-end fashion ad featuring an elegantly dressed woman eating a pretzel. Normally, that wouldn't raise my curiosity — maybe an eyebrow. Luxury is leaning hard into culture lately. Maisons that have traditionally had nothing to do with sports are suddenly tapping into niches like Pilates or road cycling. Fashion brands are getting involved in literature or book clubs. So, I wondered: Is this pretzel a deliberate cultural statement?

Cultural capital. Cultural authority. Cultural value. Cultural credibility. «Culture» is the latest It-word. Let's find out what these terms mean and how the concept of culture translates to retail.

Cultural capital, a term introduced by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, describes the non-financial assets that help people move up in society: education, language, style, taste. Applied to luxury, it flips the old status equation: knowledge now beats ownership. The knowledge around style is worth more than being able to afford the logo.

Two trends make that shift visible. Quiet luxury trades loud branding for understated craftsmanship — the price tag is high, but it's not for everyone to see. Gatekeeping, meanwhile, one of WGSN's 2026 top trends (global trend forecasting agency), is its logical extension. Consumers guard the knowledge itself. As the agency puts it, people increasingly feel the urge «to guard the products and spaces that define them».

High-end brands actively shape the answer to that question themselves by making their way into media and film platforms. In a 2025 study, The Symbolic Politics of Luxury Brands in Film and Television, researcher Rui Tao shows how luxury houses use scripted narratives to enter cultural production directly, rather than advertising within it.

Tao calls this process «sacralization»: film festivals, on-screen storytelling, and media reviews confer legitimacy on a brand, cementing its dominant position in the cultural field. In other words, brands don't only claim cultural authority; they get external institutions to grant it to them.

Brands are no longer evaluated by what they sell but by what they stand for and how well they connect with the consumer emotionally through values, identity and meaning. The latest Business of Fashion report, State of Fashion: Face to Face With Luxury Clients, created with McKinsey & Company, states that the number one driver of desirability among US and Chinese luxury consumers is emotional connection. Cultural value shapes perceived brand value more than quality and craftsmanship, which are now baseline expectations.

Here's the twist: cultural value doesn't automatically equal rich brand history. Younger brands whose identity aligns with a subgroup's identity have better chances. According to the BoF report, 68 percent of US clients say smaller, independent challenger brands reflect who they are better than heritage houses do.

Brands can pursue different approaches to build cultural relevance, but if the consumer doesn't buy into it, the whole house of cards collapses. Straightforward but not easy. It means choosing where to play and acknowledging that being relevant to one group means being irrelevant to another.

Here is where it gets practical. If cultural capital, authority, value and credibility are the currencies luxury now trades in, retail is where they are either earned or lost.

Spaces need to become places built to deepen emotional connection. Retail staff turn into curators of the brand relationship; this is cultural storytelling in physical form. Yet we can’t ask someone to curate a relationship they don't feel part of. A strong retail culture starts with employee experience before it reaches the customer.

What happened to the pretzel? Nothing, but I felt a strong desire to have one. Whether the pretzel is a cultural statement or not, the discussions around culture in the context of luxury underpin a shift in consumer mindset on the one hand and the hunt of brands for consumer loyalty on the other. Instead of chasing, how about building? Culture creates a sense of belonging that goes far beyond the transaction. Why not invest in a strong retail culture that earns loyalty rather than forces it?