What defines a luxury brand today
Luxury brands are defined less by what they claim and more by how they behave. Strategic clarity, restraint, and consistency over time distinguish true luxury from approximation.
‘Bespoke’ in 2025
How bespoke has shifted from handcrafted exclusivity to purpose-led personalisation - and what this evolution means for luxury brands in 2025. Linked to our work in luxury brand strategy.
What makes a modern luxury brand identity design work
A luxury brand identity is more than a logo – it is the visual language that communicates strategy through detail, restraint and craft. From typography to digital expression, the strongest systems create trust by feeling inevitable. Explore our approach to luxury brand strategy.
The principles of branding in luxury hospitality
How brand strategy, identity, service and storytelling come together to shape high-end hospitality experiences across hotels, clubs and wellness spaces.
Branding for interior designers and architects
Interior designers and architects share a peculiar problem. They spend their careers shaping how other people's spaces look and feel, and yet their own brands are often the least considered thing they own.
Elevating Indian luxury to the global stage
Helping Indian designers transform local craft into globally recognised luxury - with digital strategy, brand identity and storytelling.
Luxury in the Middle East
Exploring the fast-evolving Gulf luxury market, and how a luxury branding agency can help global brands resonate with audiences across Saudi, UAE and Kuwait.
Accessible luxury – a natural home for lab-grown diamonds
Why lab-grown diamonds thrive in accessible luxury but struggle at the top. SUM explores the market dynamics, branding cues, and future opportunities for jewellery brands entering this evolving category.
What a luxury brand consultancy actually does
The phrase luxury brand consultancy is used loosely enough to mean almost anything, so it is worth being precise about what the good version actually is. A luxury brand consultancy works on decisions, not deliverables. Where a design studio produces the artefacts of a brand - its identity, its website, its campaign - a consultancy works upstream of all of it, on the harder questions of meaning, position and price that determine whether those artefacts are worth making at all.
Luxury brand storytelling: why the story is the product
In luxury, the object is rarely the whole purchase. A handbag holds what a cheaper bag holds; a watch tells the same time. What the customer is really paying for is the story around the object - its heritage, its provenance, the world it belongs to and the person they become by owning it. This is why brand storytelling is not a marketing flourish in luxury. It is the mechanism by which value is created.
The codes of luxury beauty branding: why restraint sells the ritual
Beauty is the most crowded shelf in luxury, and the most revealing. It is a category where the product in the jar is often near-identical across price points, which means the entire premium rests on the brand - on the story, the ritual and the codes that surround it. Nowhere is branding more nakedly the product than in beauty. This is what makes luxury beauty branding both difficult and, done well, extraordinarily powerful.
Luxury brand positioning: the art of deciding what to leave out
Ask most brands what they stand for and you will hear a list. Ask a luxury brand the same question and, if it is any good, you will hear a single, defensible idea - and, just as importantly, a list of things it has chosen not to be. That act of choosing, and of declining, is luxury brand positioning, and it is the most consequential decision a house makes.
Why brand strategy still matters in the digital age
Luxury branding is evolving quickly, yet strategy remains the foundation. In a digital age of speed and distraction, it provides the clarity and consistency that build long-term value. Discover SUM’s approach to luxury brand strategy.
Generative AI in luxury. Quantum shift, or really useful tool?
Exploring the tension between AI innovation and human authenticity in luxury. SUM considers how generative AI could support, but not replace, the craftsmanship and storytelling that define true luxury.
Modern heritage. How to compete in a luxury market dominated by centenarian brands.
How new luxury brands can earn credibility through authenticity and craft — without waiting 100 years for heritage to happen.
Gen-Z and the new face of luxury
Discover how Gen Z is redefining luxury fashion. SUM Design explores new expectations, shifting aesthetics, and branding approaches tailored to this evolving luxury consumer.
How inclusive is you exclusive brand?
Can a luxury brand be both exclusive and inclusive? We explore how high-end positioning can coexist with a modern, diverse brand strategy.
Craft and the democratisation of luxury
How a renewed appreciation for global craft is reshaping luxury — from heritage ateliers to emerging artisan communities worldwide.
Jing Collabs & Drops spoke with Simon Woolford of SUM about Baccarat’s latest collaboration with Pokémon
Simon Woolford comments on Baccarat’s $25k Pokémon collaboration — and what it signals about the fusion of pop culture and luxury branding.
Luxury with a human touch
How brands can preserve emotional connection in digital spaces — and create luxury content that truly feels human.
Luxury at the speed of change
How luxury brands can evolve fast without losing strategic depth — and why core brand clarity matters more than ever.
Brand naming – sustainable, but not in the way you imagine
Why lasting relevance — not green credentials — should guide luxury brand naming for long-term impact and differentiation.
Jing spoke with Simon Woolford of SUM about the expected return of cultural institutions to the world of fashion
How fashion brands used cultural institutions to stay visible during lockdown - blending physical spectacle with digital reach and storytelling.
Re-awakening the senses through immersive interactive brand experiences
Why post-pandemic consumers are craving physical, sensory brand experiences - and how luxury is evolving to meet that need.
Quiet luxury
Across the globe, luxury has been synonymous with status. But in today’s market, restraint speaks louder than excess—and branding must reflect that shift.
The art of luxury packaging: why the box is the brand
For most brands, packaging is a cost to be minimised. For a luxury brand, it is one of the few moments where the promise becomes physical: held in the hand, weighed, opened. Long before a customer reads a word of copy, they have felt the brand through its packaging - the density of the board, the friction of a lid, the restraint of an unmarked surface.
Circular economy: the new cornerstone of sustainable luxury branding
How circular design principles are reshaping luxury branding — from material innovation to storytelling and long-term brand strategy.
BoF talk with founder Simon Woolford about why the fashion industry is betting big on Jennifer Lopez
LONDON, United Kingdom — Jennifer Lopez is in the spotlight right now, but not just because of her Oscar nominations snub.
Koraru - circular packaging as brand statement
How sustainable packaging became a central brand statement for Kōraru — and how SUM brought circularity to life through material and design choices.
SUM deepens its digital and social relationship with luxury kitchen leader Poggenpohl
Having been initially appointed to handle Social Media and Digital Marketing for the UK team based in Wigmore Street, SUM has now been awarded a similar brief for the brand’s global HQ based in Herford, Germany.
My new luxury brand is sustainable, ethical, natural, digitally-native, and has a strong ecom platform. So, will it succeed?
In BoF’s article ‘How Covid Is Catalysing a New Era of Luxury’, some encouraging projections for the return of the luxury consumer were made, specifically within the booming Ecommerce sector.
More recently the BBC has posed the question here , and Vogue Business has been redefining Sustainability for 2021 here.
These are just three of many thought-provoking pieces that look forward to a future of post-Covid consumerism, and one can conclude from them that your brand will need to own many or all of the traits covered in the title of this post.
How Covid-19 is catalysing a new era of luxury
A potent combination of long-term industry forces and pandemic-induced shocks have forced changes the industry had been anticipating for some time. How will luxury catch up now that years’ worth of transformation happened only in a matter of months?
Luxury brands look back to get ahead
After an era of streamlined logos and nearly constant drops of Instagrammable merchandise, European fashion houses are reasserting brand signatures from their pasts to signal lasting value in an uncertain market.
Redefining London luxury
London based startup Shaku is an emerging brand best known for its highly detailed botanical drawings on scarfs and accessories. The Shaku brand produces luxury accessories, homewares, candles and scarfs, all born from the love of drawing and nature.
Starting-up in a downturn
There are two opposing schools of thought.
The first: You must be crazy. These days the consumer is not spending on fashion or luxury, and nobody really knows how things will shape-up in the future.
The second: There has rarely been a better time to plan the launch of a new luxury of fashion brand.
Liliana Guerreiro brand strategy & brand identity
We were approached by Liliana Guerreiro to deliver a brand strategy, brand story, identity, packaging, website and associated marketing with an aim to establish them as the first Portuguese luxury Jewellery brand. We also produced an ad campaign shot in Portugal.
How the rich are shopping right now
Among wealthy shoppers in the US, there’s little appetite for getting all dressed up when there’s nowhere to go.
With most large social gatherings on hold, and even dining inside a restaurant off the menu in many cities until the pandemic is brought under control, luxury brands are having a tough time convincing some of their best customers to start splurging on going-out shoes and black-tie gala gowns again.
London Fashion Week will go forward in June with a new digital, men’s and women’s platform
The idea of staging runway shows during global COVID-19-related lockdowns might seem impossible, but instead of giving up hope, the fashion industry is envisioning new ways to communicate in a time of crisis.
Searching for a fashion branding agency?
SUM. has worked with clients who have built their fashion brands in markets across the globe. They have briefed us to create their brand strategies and identities, and to create their marketing plans and campaigns. We’ve collaborated with Allsaints, Victoria Beckham, Jimmy Choo, La Perla, , and many others.
SUM - from London to the world
From its London offices, SUM. collaborates with its clients to develop, build, and grow their global brands. We have worked with international fashion and luxury brands including Jimmy Choo, La Perla, Âme diamond jewellery, and Victoria Beckham , as well as with London- centric brands such as Allsaints, Bloomsbury, Boujis, and Hackney Walk.
SUM - the leading luxury branding agency
London has long been a focal point of the global luxury, design and branding industries. SUM., based in Shoreditch, has worked with clients who have built their brands in markets across the globe. We’ve worked with Jimmy Choo, La Perla, Âme diamond jewellery, Boujis, Victoria Beckham and many others, to create brand strategies and identities, and to create their marketing plans and campaigns.
AZ Productions - branded by SUM
A-Z Prod is a full service creative production partner and consultancy based in London and New York offering worldwide production services.
Âme Store Los Angeles
Its great to see the Ame brand taking shape in their new flagship store in Los Angeles.
We love building brands
Sum is well known for building some well known established luxury and fashion brands but we also love to work with start ups and early stage brands. We have launched many in the last few years.
