Social media is pushing luxury brands into being lifestyle brands

After a year of speculation about Gucci entering the home goods market, the company announced their fall launch of a décor line. Rumors first arose after Gucci’s 2016 resort show in London featured embroidered pillows on every guest’s seat. The line, named Gucci Décor, will include similar embroidered pillows in addition to chairs, candles and a variety of other knickknacks. Gucci isn’t the only luxury brand dipping their toes into the home goods market, but the launch of their line symbolizes the importance of home goods being an authentic extension for a luxury brand.

Vivaldi Consultant Leila Belmahi told Glossy that a major catalyst to the rise of designer-made home goods is the larger cultural obsession with lifestyle brands, largely propagated by social media. “Social media has turned private spaces, like a consumer’s bedroom, into public extensions of their personal style. Given that social media, in part, has driven demand for home decor, it’s imperative for [brands] to consider how consumers will want to use their products in the short and long term, and what story the brand is trying to tell in the context of people’s home. Because in the world of social media, walls do talk.”