Luxury Brands Are Making Wealth More Accessible to People Who Already Have It

The Open Door tote, the most accessible piece in Maison Distant's new collection, costs $1,850 and has excellent handles. They lie flat against a winter coat, distribute weight comfortably and allow the bag to be carried through the public entrance without creasing. Customers invited upstairs will have it carried for them.

I mention the handles because the house has plainly thought about the person who will use this bag. The leather is supple. There is a proper lining. The discreet logo can be recognized by someone who knows it, or pointed out to someone who doesn't.

“We wanted more people to feel close to us,” the sales director said.

At the launch, this ambition was already being fulfilled. A woman was buying six totes for the people who organized her gifts. Another client had brought an assistant who was authorized to choose one in either gray or the gray available to staff. Neither woman had previously bought anything so inexpensive from the house. Both felt it was an important step.

The surprise is inside. What initially appears to be a central compartment is a second, smaller bag, attached by a fine chain and closed with a little brass lock.

This is the Inner Circle. It costs $14,000 and is available to established clients. Purchasers of the Open Door may look at it through a mesh panel. Access is arranged separately.

Its presence reduces the tote's useful capacity, but the loss is sensitively handled. There remains room for a wallet, glasses and a phone. A paperback fits if you remove the dust jacket. I asked whether the Inner Circle could be taken out entirely.

The director looked at the lining until I had finished asking.

For customers ready to deepen their relationship, the house offers an unusually transparent route. They may join the list of people interested in joining the waiting list. The initial list is reviewed twice a year by a team empowered to do no more than move a name to the second list. This keeps expectations clear.

Once on the waiting list, clients receive occasional personal messages. One woman showed me a birthday greeting from her adviser. It confirmed that nothing had become available in a way that made it apparent he had remembered exactly what she could not have.

She had shown it to her husband, who had sent flowers.

Such closeness presents a difficulty for older clients. If a person can now walk in from the street and leave with a Maison Distant bag, how will anyone know who has been doing so for years?

The house has responded with a version of the Open Door reserved for those clients. It is identical except for a small stitch beneath the handle. The stitch is free. It cannot be added later. Several buyers at the launch had lifted their handles onto the table.

Clients whose collections are complete have a different problem. There is little left to want. For them, the house has introduced Consideration, a $2,600 appointment at which they can be refused something they do not yet own.

The service lasts forty minutes. A senior adviser brings out the requested object, remembers something about the client's family and explains, with regret, that it is unavailable to them. The client may hold it briefly. Refreshments continue after it has been put away.

I met a man who had flown in for a refusal concerning a small overnight bag. His adviser had remembered both dogs. When he asked whether the answer might change, she had rested one hand on the lid of the box.

“It felt considered,” he said.

A remote version is offered for less, but he would not recommend it. An email could have been sent to anybody. His refusal had required a room.

Consideration has proved sufficiently popular that the house now limits access. Some clients who have requested refusal have been declined without charge. They are assured that this does not constitute the service and should not be described as such to other clients.

I had gone to the launch intending to assess a tote. By the end, I wanted the director to remember which one I hadn't been allowed to buy.

She took my details on a thick cream card. My surname was misspelled. I left it that way, since it was now the name under which I was known to the house.

Factual versus fictional: Maison Distant, its collection, prices, customers, quotations and services are invented. This is not a report about any real luxury brand's sales practices.

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