The changing shape of luxury

June 13, 2026

When I was five, my mother found herself raising me on her own. We lived modestly and she worked really hard. And somehow, even with all she was carrying, she still found a way to take me on trips every year. I loved those trips. I loved being somewhere different, seeing things I didn’t see every day, and feeling for a little while like the world was bigger than the one I knew.

Even then, I felt those trips were a luxury, modest as they may have been. They were a break in my ordinary life and gave me memories I carried long after I was home again.

Of course, that’s not what I thought luxury meant for a very long time. I grew up watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and later MTV Cribs, and luxury looked like enormous houses, expensive cars, giant clothes filled closets, massive swimming pools, and the kind of life that seemed to exist only for people who had somehow been chosen for a different world.

By high school, I had already learned that belonging had rules. It mattered where you lived, what your house looked like, what your parents did for work, and what brand of clothing you wore. I remember saving my babysitting money to buy my first Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, hoping this one shirt would help me pass some unspoken test. And I’m embarrassed to say now, that I also remember hoping no one from school would see me walk into Kmart with my mother.

That memory still makes me ache a little. I remember being that girl so clearly. Wanting to be accepted. Wanting to disappear and be seen at the same time. Wanting the right thing to make me feel like I was enough.

For a lot of years, I thought luxury was something just beyond my reach. Something that belonged to people with bigger lives, better clothes, and doors that opened more easily for them. But moving to Hawaii began to unravel that belief in me.

Hawaii is incredibly expensive, and like so many people there, I was living hand to mouth. I was young and single, and one of my first jobs had me working from 3 to 11 at night, which meant the first part of the day was mine. I’d go to the beach before work or hike through the nearby rainforest with the scent of damp earth, eucalyptus, and ginger in the air. This was the best part of my day.

I didn’t have the things I had once associated with luxury. I didn’t have extra money for clothes or any real sense of security. But I had beauty everywhere. I had the ocean. I had mornings that belonged to me. I had the feeling of being fully inside my own life, and that began to feel like luxury in a way no brand name ever had.

Later, when my daughter was four months old, I moved back to my hometown. I was leaving a marriage that had become deeply unhealthy, and I needed safety, stability, and the ability to raise my daughter with both feet on the ground. In many ways, I found what I was looking for, and I was grateful for that, but I missed the texture of those days in Hawaii. I missed stepping outside and being met by beauty. I missed those small daily experiences that didn’t cost anything but changed how I felt inside my own body.

For years, I believed I would go back. Instead, life unfolded differently. I remarried, and in my husband I found a kind of steadiness that helped reset my nervous system. Slowly, with more safety beneath me, I found my way back to parts of myself that had been waiting. Eventually, I began building a business around my art, something I had dreamed of long before I knew how it could ever be real.

Somewhere through all of that, my idea of luxury changed. It stopped being about having something that proved I belonged. It stopped being about the label, the house, or the status. Now it feels much more personal than that. It feels like the freedom to follow an idea at my bench and see where it wants to go. It feels like morning rituals I love, time at the lake, floating in the sun, a beautiful meal, travel, and purchasing something special from another artist or small business because I know there is a real person behind it.

I think many of us are beginning to feel that shift. The old idea of luxury feels a little thinner than it used to. Big brands feel less special. More recognizable, maybe, but not always more meaningful. And as technology and AI move deeper into nearly every part of our lives, handmade work begins to feel even more important. I think there will always be something irreplaceable about what passes through the human hand. There’s something different about an object that begins with a person noticing something in the world, feeling something in their heart, and then trying to bring it to life through their hands with skill and care.

When I make a piece of jewelry, I’m thinking about weight, movement, texture, proportion, feeling, and the small strange details that make something feel alive. I’m thinking about the person who may one day wear it and what it might mean to them. I’m thinking about beauty, but also connection. I’m thinking about the beauty of the natural world, because so much of what I make begins there.

And when someone chooses to support my work, that purchase becomes part of a much larger circle. It helps support my family. It helps keep this small creative life going. It helps me buy from other artists, small lapidaries, local businesses, independent shops, and people who are also trying to make a life with their hands and hearts. It also allows me to give in ways that matter to me, especially to causes that care for the natural world.

That may not be the glossy version of luxury we were sold, but to me it feels far more beautiful. There’s something intimate about knowing where something came from. Knowing there was a real person behind it. Knowing your dollars did not simply disappear into some enormous machine, but moved through a life, a family, a community, and maybe even back into the earth in some small way.

Sometimes a pretty piece of pottery catches your eye, or a handcrafted necklace makes your heart do that little leap, and you don’t need an explanation for wanting it. Delight is allowed. Small moments of pleasure are allowed. But I do think it matters to ask what we want the things we choose to hold. Do we want the things we choose to be about feeling accepted by others, or do we want them to bring us back to ourselves?

That’s what I hope my work does. I hope it offers a small moment of beauty in the middle of an ordinary day. I hope it becomes the ring you glance down at when you need to remember your own steadiness, the necklace you reach for because it feels like a little piece of protection, or the earrings that make you feel more like yourself before you walk out the door.

Luxury, to me now, isn’t only about what something costs. It’s about how it makes you feel. It’s about rarity, care, connection, and the values carried inside the thing itself. Sometimes it’s simply sunshine on your skin, or laughing so hard that you cry, or an hour in nature when the world feels too loud. And sometimes it is choosing something beautiful, made slowly by human hands, because it reminds you that you are worth beauty too.

That’s the kind of luxury I believe in now. Not one that asks us to prove we belong, but that helps us remember we already do.

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