The New Economics of Aspiration

Why capital is chasing the new class of scalable, accessible luxury brands

Written by Mufaro Mutowembwa

Aspiration used to be defined by scarcity: the waitlisted bag, the sold-out gown, the auction-house diamond. The Birkin still has its queue, and high jewellery still glitters under Sotheby’s hammer. But desire now orbits a $29 lip treatment, an everyday diamond, or shapewear designed to disappear. SKIMS, Mejuri, Rhode; brands once dismissed as ‘mass’ now command the cultural attention once reserved solely for heritage houses.

The irony? None of these brands are technically “luxury” in the traditional sense. They don’t trade on ateliers, archives, or five-figure price tags. Instead, they sell something arguably more powerful: aspiration engineered for mass adoption.

Today, the most culturally powerful brands aren’t defined by how many people they can keep out, but by how many they can pull in - without losing the allure of luxury. It’s a formula proving far more scalable than scarcity. The question is no longer whether luxury can trickle down. It’s whether the middle can scale up and, in the process, rewrite what aspiration looks like.

From Scarcity to Scale

Traditional luxury operated on scarcity economics: few buyers, extreme margins, symbols reserved for the “elite”. Chanel quilting, Hermès orange, Cartier’s panther all were signifiers designed to separate insiders from outsiders. The business model didn’t require frequency; it relied on permanence and mythology.

This new class is built for scale: scarcity creates icons; scale creates engines

• SKIMS turned shapewear into a habit loop. Once women find their fit, they rarely defect. New silhouettes and shades aren’t just seasonal - they’re engineered prompts for re-engagement, much like software updates.

• Mejuri re-coded jewellery from a once-in-a-decade splurge mediated by a partner into a weekly drop, self-purchased and habitual. Diamonds became accessible.

• Rhode built a replenishment funnel out of a single hero product. The “glazed skin” vernacular made beauty cultural language, then locked consumers into a low-cost, repeatable system.

Each proves the same point: aspiration is no longer just a static symbol. It can also be a repeatable behaviour and repeatable behaviours are where revenue compounds

The Precedents We Forgot

This isn’t entirely new. Diffusion lines like Marc by Marc Jacobs, Armani Exchange, even the early years of Miu Miu were the first attempts to bottle prestige at lower price points. But culturally, they never stuck. They felt like half-measures: too cheap to be truly aspirational, too tethered to the mothership to feel original. Diffusion lines struggled because they sat in an uncomfortable middle ground. For some consumers, they felt less like an entry point and more like a visible reminder that you weren’t buying the main line. In a world where status is everything, that perception proved fatal.

Miu Miu is the exception that proves the rule. Launched as Prada’s younger, more affordable sister, it only rose to prominence once it leaned back into the luxury end of the spectrum - raising prices, deepening craft, and treating itself as a full fashion house rather than a diffusion play. The lesson is clear: half-baked luxury doesn’t work.

What the new guard has done differently is refuse the spin-off logic altogether. SKIMS, Rhode, Mejuri; they aren’t “discount luxury.” They acknowledge accessibility in price, but deliver luxury in feeling: fresh, young, and culturally fluent. In doing so, they’ve escaped the stigma of the middle ground. These are not hand-me-down prestige labels; they’re brands built to feel fresh, young, and undeniably their own.

Cultural Catalysts: Why Now?

Four forces collided to make this possible:

1. Generational Appetite. Millennials and Gen Z crave prestige but live with debt and financial precarity. They want the aura of luxury in achievable doses. $29 feels aspirational but accessible.

2. Social Media Flattening. A Row 90s bag and a Rhode lip gloss occupy the same TikTok frame. The hierarchy collapsed. Prestige became screen-agnostic.

3. Recessionary Mindset. Even in downturns, consumers crave prestige - the lipstick effect. Today, lipstick is literal: prestige skincare, shapewear, “everyday” jewellery.

4. Relatability as Status. In an era of widening inequality, relatability itself became aspirational. Being “in on it” matters more than being locked out. Exclusivity feels isolating; relatability feels communal.

   

Founder Psychology: The New Luxury Operators

Today’s consumer brands are founder-driven in a way heritage never was.

• Kim Kardashian isn’t endorsing SKIMS, she’s embedded in it. Her cultural currency has been built directly into the company’s architecture. Her body, scrutinised for decades, is marketing collateral. But more importantly, she’s paired cultural wattage with Emma Grede’s operational rigour, building vertical integration rare in celebrity brands.

• Hailey Bieber is Rhode. Her face is the product, literally. The feedback loop is instantaneous: she posts, the product sells, the consumer reposts, the aesthetics compounds.

• Noura Sakkijha at Mejuri represents another archetype: not celebrity, but operator. Her engineering background reimagined jewellery as a system, not a splurge, proving founder-market fit in a new way.

And then there are hybrid figures like Emily Weiss at Glossier. She wasn’t a celebrity in the Kardashian sense, but she wasn’t a behind-the-scenes operator either. Weiss built cultural capital through Into The Gloss and converted that editorial authority into community-led commerce. Glossier’s trajectory, from cult favourite to cautionary tale to comeback player shows both the power and the fragility of building a brand around a founder who is half tastemaker, half CEO.

These founders aren’t product people in the traditional sense. They’re cultural figures who’ve turned their own influence into the growth engine of the brand.

That integration is a structural advantage. A post from Hailey Bieber or Kim Kardashian isn’t just marketing, its real-time demand generation, instantly visible in revenue. The story, the symbol, and the sales channel are all embodied in one person. For investors, that means lower CAC, faster velocity, and an unusually tight loop between culture and commerce.

Admittedly, the risk is equally clear: when equity is tied so heavily to a single face, it’s vulnerable to scandal, ageing, or even shifting consumer mood. Kylie Cosmetics offers a cautionary tale: once the fastest-growing beauty brand in the world, now plateaued as Kylie’s cultural influence wanes. Victoria’s Secret is another: decades of brand equity evaporated once its cultural narrative fell out of step with the times.

The sharp takeaway: when it works, this model compounds faster than anything heritage luxury can engineer. When it doesn’t, the collapse is just as swift. Investors have to ask: is this founder a cultural asset or a single point of failure? The best bets are the ones where the founder can translate their personal halo into a broader, enduring system - one that outlives their face.

Hailey Bieber for Forbes 30 Under 30

The Investor POV

Investor interest in this category has tipped from curiosity to conviction

SKIMS: Often the subject of IPO buzz, co-founder Emma Grede has clarified there’s no active plan to go public at the moment. Still, its ~$4 billion valuation and strong performance keep the optionality open for the future.

Rhode: Acquired by e.l.f. Beauty in an insane deal valued at up to $1 billion - $600 million in cash, $200 million in stock, plus a $200 million performance-based earnout over three years. Hailey Bieber remains deeply involved as Chief Creative Officer and Head of Innovation.

Mejuri: Still private, Mejuri has raised over $100 million in growth capital, expanded with new stores and a loyalty app, and maintains an estimated revenue near $188 million. While no public sale is on the table today, its traction and unit economics make it a logical candidate for future acquisition or public markets.

Why the investor interest and commitment? Because these brands aren’t just selling products, they’re building cash-flow machines disguised as lip gloss, diamonds, and shapewear. Investors prize categories that behave like subscriptions: predictable, repeatable, and compounding over time. A $29 serum rebought every month is more valuable than a $9,000 bag bought once a decade, no matter how iconic.

That combination of prestige halo with subscription-like economics is rare in consumer. It’s why SKIMS can raise at a $4B valuation, why Rhode was acquired for up to $1B just two years after launch, and why Mejuri’s $100M+ in funding hasn’t slowed investor appetite. They deliver what capital loves most: cultural heat that translates directly into recurring revenue.

The traditional luxury playbook scarcity, high margins, slow drip equity is being outpaced by something more dynamic:

• Scarcity = capital efficiency. High margin, low scale, long-run equity.

• Relatability = revenue efficiency. High scale, predictable cash flow, compounding returns.

• The real upside lies in brands that bridge both. SKIMS, for instance, has shown it can borrow halo from exclusivity while still building scalable, replenishable loyalty.

These brands deliver predictable revenues, flywheel retention, and culturally embedded virality that serves as low-cost customer acquisition. Each new shade or product drop is akin to a software update - low cost, high re-engagement.

The investor bet is now clear: Luxury has been rewritten as recurring revenue - and that’s what today’s capital wants.

Risks & Counterpoints

The economics are undeniable, but even the best playbooks come with fragility baked in. These brands scale faster than anything legacy luxury could imagine, but that velocity makes them fragile. Copycats emerge overnight, algorithms shift without warning, and the same celebrity influence that builds a billion-dollar company can just as easily unravel it. For every SKIMS or Rhode, there are dozens of imitators and countless examples of cultural heat that couldn’t convert into staying power.

• Copycats. For every Rhode, there are ten glazing-fluid knockoffs. For every SKIMS, an avalanche of dupes.

• Celebrity Fragility. Influence cuts both ways. A scandal, a misstep, and the brand halo can dim overnight.

• Platform Dependency. These brands live and die by TikTok virality, Instagram aesthetics, algorithm visibility. A tweak to the feed can evaporate distribution.

The Bigger Risk: Eroding Aspiration

The danger of frequency is that it can tip into fatigue. What made luxury powerful was its ability to resist the everyday; what makes these new models profitable is their ability to become it. For investors, routine is the prize - predictable, repeat-purchase behaviour almost always commands premium multiples. But for consumers, routine cuts both ways. The same habit that makes these brands compounding engines can also risk undermining their allure if aspiration starts to feel like admin.

Glossier is instructive here. Just two or three years ago, it was the case study in over-indexing on hype - beloved and buzzy, but without the replenishment engine or distribution muscle to sustain it. Once virality waned, sales faltered. Glossier has since staged a comeback, embedding itself in the likes of Sephora and Mecca, tightening its product discipline, and reasserting itself in the big leagues. The arc is a reminder: even cult brands can stumble when aspiration tips into fatigue, but with the right reset, they can rebuild into stronger, more durable businesses.

The Forward Look

The obvious question now is what comes next. If lip gloss, shapewear, and jewellery have proved the model, which categories are next in line?

This playbook is already global. In Australia, Maison Essentiele has scaled from bootstrapped sleepwear to an international ready-to-wear label stocked in Net-a-Porter and Selfridges. In Seoul, Gentle Monster turned eyewear into an art installation business, blending product and experience with a cult following. And Copenhagen’s Ganni has shown how “responsible” pricing and cultural relevance can attract both mass audiences and private equity backers. The middle scaling up isn’t just American; it’s becoming the global default.

• Wellness. Erewhon has primed consumers to treat adaptogens and supplements like prestige fashion. A wellness brand coded with luxury signals could be the next SKIMS. Poppi and OLIPOP are already scaling beverage as a lifestyle badge.

• Home. Sheets, candles, ceramics. Parachute and Brooklinen hinted at it, but no one has scaled “home as aspiration” globally. Diptyque sells luxury fragrance; the gap is for an accessible version with frequency.

• Consumer Tech. Imagine a wearable or headphone brand that sells less on specs than aesthetic coherence. Hardware could be next.

• Geography. This won’t stay US-centric. Maison Essentiele in Australia, Copenhagen collectives, Seoul’s streetwear-luxury hybrids, the playbook is global.

The real question: where does frequency end and fatigue begin? The investor bet is that the strongest operators will keep compounding before the imitators burn out.

Closing Note

The paradox holds: aspiration hasn’t collapsed, it’s been re-engineered. The old luxury model was scarcity. The new luxury model is scale.

The next $500M brand won’t win by keeping people out. It’ll win by pulling people back in, again and again. Luxury is no longer what you can’t have it’s what you can’t stop buying.