WHY SLOWNESS HAS BECOME THE LAST TRUE LUXURY

“Luxury was once easy to recognise. It was expensive, scarce and materially evident. It relied on weight, ornament and visible effort. Over time, however, those signals have lost precision. Cost can be deferred, rarity can be simulated, and craftsmanship can be replicated at scale. What remains resistant to reproduction is time. Slowness has quietly replaced opulence as the most convincing marker of luxury.

In a culture organised around speed, immediacy has become the default condition. Products are optimised to perform instantly, services promise frictionless access, and interfaces are designed to disappear into efficiency. The ideal interaction leaves no trace in memory. Yet this very optimisation has flattened experience. When everything is fast, nothing feels deliberate. When access is immediate, desire collapses. Slowness reintroduces distance, and with it, meaning.

This shift is not nostalgic, nor is it reactionary. It is structural. Time has moved from being a constraint to becoming a feature. Experiences that take longer are perceived as more intentional. Objects that require waiting are assumed to be more considered. The delay itself becomes evidence of care. Slowness, in this sense, operates as a signal rather than a function.

Rituals around food and drink make this particularly visible. Wine, for example, does not gain value through speed. Many of the gestures associated with expertise, decanting, waiting, observing, are deliberate acts of postponement. They extend the moment between anticipation and consumption. The value lies not only in the taste, but in the suspended interval before it. Waiting becomes part of the experience, rather than an obstacle to it.

The same logic applies well beyond gastronomy. Coffee that drips slowly feels more attentive than coffee extracted under pressure. Furniture that takes weeks to arrive is perceived as more carefully made. Services that refuse urgency gain credibility simply by rejecting instant gratification. Slowness does not necessarily improve performance, but it alters perception. Its value is symbolic, not technical.

This is where luxury begins to diverge from wealth. Wealth buys speed. Priority lanes, express delivery, immediate access. Luxury increasingly does the opposite. It withholds, complicates and demands patience. An object that cannot be used immediately asks for attention. An experience that unfolds slowly forces presence. Slowness makes the user complicit in the process.

There is, however, an uncomfortable dimension to this. Slowness is not equally available. To wait by choice requires control over one’s time. In this sense, slowness signals autonomy rather than abundance. It suggests freedom from constant acceleration, from schedules dictated entirely by efficiency. That implication is precisely what gives it status.

Design has begun to reflect this shift. Some objects now introduce friction intentionally, not due to technical limitation but as a way to reshape behaviour. By slowing consumption, they shift focus away from outcome and back onto process. The object ceases to be a neutral tool and becomes an active participant in the experience. The distinction between meaningful delay and simple inconvenience lies entirely in intent.

Ultimately, slowness offers awareness rather than comfort. It makes users conscious of what they are doing, how they are interacting and why they are waiting. In an environment dominated by speed, that awareness is rare. And rarity, more than polish or price, is what luxury now depends on.

Speed can be bought. Slowness must be chosen.”

– Mike Simonelli

November 2021