Valentine's Day: how luxury brands are getting in tune with new emotional bonds

As a couple, alone or in threes, the new generations are reinventing ways of loving each other. But above all, love is being defined more broadly than ever, whether romantic, friendly, family or solitary. And luxury brands have understood the value of relying on these new definitions for their Valentine’s Day campaigns.

How far we seem to be from the days when couple rhymed with forever and, above all, when it was essentially perceived as the essential place for self-realization. So much so that, to quote Aline Laurent-Mayard in her post-romantic book, everything that happened outside of romantic relationships seemed to be just a (too) long prologue.

Today, the discourse has changed and while some seem to want to wean themselves off alcohol on a date (dry dating) or even off flirting for a while (boy sober) or to embrace their singleness (Single not ashamed), there is also a discourse emerging to rehabilitate friendship as a cardinal value.

This phenomenon is accentuated by the “epidemic of loneliness” observed in 2023 among young people and aggravated by COVID-19, even though this status is bound to become more frequent and longer lasting.

It is with this terrain characterized by a certain impermanence that brands must now come to terms. And luxury is not exempt from these great maneuvers.

Breaking the spell

Today’s love has little to do with the watered-down vision inherited from Disney fairy tales.

Once perceived as the primary space for fulfillment, recognition and self-expression, love is now also presented as a potential space for domination, manipulation and political struggle.

A pessimistic vision, which leads a growing number of individuals, prey to dating fatigue and no longer able to bear its injunctions of perfection, to withdraw for a shorter or longer period from the “market” of flirting, in order to rebuild and recharge their batteries. And that’s not to mention the divorce rate, which has been rising since the end of the 1990s, convincing a growing number of young people of the non-essential nature of marriage and parenthood.