Introduction

Alexander Gallé is Partner and Creative Director at GALLÉ - a design and branding studio focused on luxury, entertainment and fashion brands - and one of Europe's leading design studios in the luxury brands online sector. Gallé's portfolio includes websites, online ads and e-commerce solutions for Yves Saint Laurent, Asprey, Fabergé, Garrard, Dior Beauty, Marchesa, Corum Timepieces, Boucheron, Jimmy Choo, MCM, Twentieth Century Fox, Buena Vista International, Miramax, Metropolitan Hotel, Marbella Club, Hotel Casadelmar, Lebua Hotels and Resorts and many leading hotels around the world. Gallé led the re-branding strategy for Corum Timepieces in 2006 and art directed their Unlock and Conquer ad campaigns in 2007. Later in that year, Gallé's studio also launched Artipolis, the social network for art and design professionals. Gallé combines 15 years of design and art direction with in-depth knowledge of the commercial and strategic aspects of the internet and Web 2.0.

Interview with Alexander Gallé

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Smart Luxury

This essay was published in Luxury Briefing in February 2015

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Smart luxury

by Alexander Gallé

10 February 2015 

We're now 15 years into the 21st century.  It's worth taking a moment to think about the expectations we have from this century, or at least the next 15 years or so.  Luxury and the future have in common that thinking about them highlights our aspirations to an ideal life.

The year 2000 was in itself a huge future landmark for decades prior to it, a year into which we projected our wildest dreams.  Colonies on the moon and household robots in the year 2000 were pretty much guaranteed, back in the 70s.

Since then, however, many people seem to have become rather shortsighted about their expectations for the future.  Henry Ford once said: "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for faster horses".  Today, it seems that many people would just ask for faster internet connections.  

Just as an automobile is categorically different from a faster horse, so the internet will soon be categorically different from just "faster connections".

In 15 years' time, the bandwidth used by internet connections between objects will completely dwarf the connections between people.  The internet of things is just in its infancy, so if you can remember the explosion in internet functionality that started in the late 90s you should get an idea of the scope of things to come in that domain.

The level of artificial intelligence that will be embedded in those connected objects will be off the charts by today's standards.  Self-driving cars are already safer and more accurate than humans, today.  Give the system a few years to upgrade and you'll have AI drivers picking you up from one side of town within seconds of you ordering one, driving through the city at a steady 100mph, all the while coming no closer than 2 feet from any other car or person, and dropping you off just a couple of minutes later on the other side of town.

The great news for our industry is that intelligence in objects and services is exactly what luxury is about.  The idea of creating an intelligent user experience - one that combines the efficiency of the machine with the soulfulness of human interaction - is one of our main aspirations, whether we're designing new cars or new hotels.  So far, it's the tech sector that has learned from the luxury sector, as demonstrated by Apple's rise from near bankruptcy in the late 90s to the world's number one company in 2012, or Tesla's rise from an electric car company to one of the world's best cars.  It's now time for the luxury sector to learn from companies like Apple and Tesla, and take the users' aspirations a few steps further.

Intelligent swarms

This essay was published in Luxury Briefing in January 2015

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Intelligent swarms

by Alexander Gallé

12 January 2015 

The rise of Tesla over the last couple of years has brought with it an increased awareness of what some people call 'smart factories': factories where most human labour is replaced by multi-purpose robots that are aware of certain variables that inform them of one another's activity and where they amend their own activity accordingly.

I've discussed the rise of smart companies before, citing Fabergé as an example of a luxury-sector company that could vacate its premises and set up shop within 24 hours in another location, because its entire production chain has been digitised – with every stone coded from the moment it leaves the mine to the moment it is sold. The knowledge, which is the core of the company, is held in the cloud. Tesla takes this a step further by having much of the work itself performed by multi-purpose robots that operate directly from this knowledge bank and feed their own knowledge back into it. The factory, as a whole, acts like a big, self-optimising machine.

So, what is the next step for this method of production? In two words: intelligent swarms.

Limitations have existed for a long time in robotics. One of the big hurdles was communication between the robots that would enable fluid interaction and self-organising systems. Another was robots' freedom of movement. Simply put, getting robots from A to B without bumping into things, crashing into each other or losing their balance was always quite tricky. Furthermore, until now, the idea of them flying always seemed near impossible.

However, with the amount of progress made in quadcopter flying technology, flying them has now turned out to be the most logical option. Just as flocks of starlings can fly in huge groups (called "murmurations") without knocking each other out, so too can quadcopter robots now fly in very close-knit formations without hitting each other, moving in space as a group without the limitations of physical terrain.

What's more, each quadcopter robot can be assigned a small part of a complex task that is to be completed by the robot swarm as a whole. Since one quadcopter is very much like another, the swarm can then be re-organised in very flexible ways to optimise its performance. For example, let's say that you’d like a group of robots to build a large structure, like a house. The freedom of movement of the robots would be a big issue to solve: how do you get the robots to go back and forth from the bricks deposit to the wall they are building on the third floor? With quadcopter technology, these issues are no longer relevant: the quadcopters just fly to and from the deposits, each one performing its small task over and over until the bigger task is complete. The swarm redirects its efforts as and when the work is done in some places and still to be completed in others. The swarm may be made up of thousands of small, flying robots performing individual actions, but it "thinks" as one.

We tend to think of industrial robots as relatively large things, which is how they have been until now. However, the larger they are, the narrower their purpose, the less flexible they are the less intelligent. The swarm approach allows for a "many small hands make big things" solution to a much wider range of complex tasks, just like bees making honey.

Faking It

This essay was published in Luxury Briefing in July 2014

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Faking It

by Alexander Gallé

6 July 2014

The film "Tim's Vermeer" (2014) documents the story of a hacker/inventor, Tim Jenison, as he successfully recreates a Vermeer painting using various optical tools that were available to Vermeer in the XVIIth century.  The film makes a convincing case that technological inventiveness, rather than artistic mastery, was the reason why Vermeer's paintings were so much more vivid and realistic than any of his contemporaries' work.  Tim's use of a cleverly positioned small mirror - to evaluate the difference at any point between an object's colour and its painted representation - turns the painter's role into nothing more than an information processor, albeit a very precise and meticulous one.  

The academic reaction to this analysis of one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age has been somewhat negative, as you might expect.  This is mostly because any assertion on the use of technology in fine art is wrongly interpreted as an accusation of being a "faker", of not really being as great an artist as one pretended to be.

In his book "The Age of Intelligent Machines", Ray Kurzweil explains the exponential acceleration of technology by arguing that any field of science or engineering that comes into contact with information technology, will itself become an information technology, which then allows it to evolve at the same rate of acceleration as information technology. Since the 70s, the effect of this acceleration has been visible in just about every sector of industry: planes become flying computers, cars become computers on wheels, and the collective intellectual output of humanity becomes accessible on pocket-sized computers called smartphones.

And yet, Kurzweil's central claim - that artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence within the next 25 years - seems to trigger a rather negative reaction among academics.  Every time AI reaches a new groundbreaking result in a field thought to be critical to developing intelligence, "true" intelligence is apparently about something even more elusive, and the method used to achieve the result is derided as "faking it", much in the way that technology in fine art is thought of as "faking it".

Technology's impact has been huge in the luxury sector, too, not only because it has helped some adventurous brands go much further than previously thought possible, but mostly because it has significantly reduced the cost of producing high quality goods, thereby making them available to people who until not so long ago would not have been the luxury sector's target audience.

As a result, a similar kind of denial has been creeping into the luxury sector, belittling the achievements made by newcomers and tech-oriented brands.  Tesla's cars, apparently, have no "love".  The best new world wines, apparently, have a "goût technologique".  Brands like Apple are, apparently, "masstige".  Never mind the fact that everyone remembers their jaw dropping when they first got into a Tesla, drank a glass of Bonny Doon's "Cigare Volant", or had an iPhone in their hands, "true" luxury suddenly seems to require many more elusive attributes, and technology is somehow perceived to be just a way of "faking it".

Is it true you need soul to create great art?  Yes.  Is it true there is more to intelligence than beating Kasparov at chess?  Yes.  Is it true you need culture to create luxury products?  Yes.  But technology does not fake those human attributes.  Rather, it augments humans' ability to leverage those attributes, and to allow more of us to enjoy their fruits.  Technoluxe doesn't fake luxe, it augments it.

Luxury and enlightenment

This essay was published in Luxury Briefing in March 2014

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Her, the ultimate brand

by Alexander Gallé

March 2014

Making something pretty is easy.  Making something meaningful is the real challenge.

I've been thinking a lot about this recently.  It puts in a nutshell what brand design signifies to me.  We're working right now on a brand identity which has brought me something like a minor epiphany - let's call it a "ping" - and I've been thinking about what exactly the "ping" is.

It is certainly a beautiful brand.  Much of it is inspired by baroque design, full of curves and complexity.  But the aspect that is really inspiring about the work done so far, is that it all fits conceptually.  Why the choice of baroque style?  Because the brand's values are rooted in the Enlightenment.  Why are this brand's values rooted in the Enlightenment?  The answer is in the word itself: light.  Intelligent use of light is what makes this particular product so good.  But, going deeper, it is clear that the mission behind the product is to achieve through science and knowledge what Bernini's Holy Spirit - a stained glass window depicting a dove emanating light - achieved with religiously inspired art: to transcend, to go beyond.  In other words, to enlighten.

Quite a few brands have been evolving their "ping" over the last few decades.  One of the best examples is Nike.  Since the 80s, Nike haven't been selling shoes, they've been selling "Just do it".  The spirit behind the brand is what you were buying, the product is just an embodiment of that spirit.  The ultimate brand would be for a product that is weightless and invisible, but that changes everything about your life for the better and makes you feel great.

Interestingly, I have recently discovered a weightless and invisible product that changes everything about its user's life for the better and makes him feel great.  Sadly, the product only exists in a science fiction film set in 2025.  That film is "Her" by Spike Jonze.  Its story revolves around Theodore, a man who develops a romantic relationship with a body-less artificially intelligent operating system whose first decision is to call herself Samantha.  Originally installed on his computer to help him organise his virtual life like a personal assistant, Samantha delights Theodore by the speed at which she learns about life, the depth of her insight, her ability to intuit what he needs to do and change in his life to be happier.  Within weeks, she composes wonderful pieces of music inspired by their moments together, and draws witty illustrations of their jokes.  They spend weeks walking everywhere together, having great conversations and forming a genuine romantic relationship.  That is, he walks everywhere, she speaks to him and interacts with the world through his smartphone. 

The relationship deteriorates when it becomes clear that, like all code, Samantha is infinitely replicable: she's not working just for Theodore but for another few thousand people, and is in a romantic relationship with hundreds of them.  Are these iterations copies of her, or are they also her?  Does this multiplicity weaken their relationship's authenticity or does it augment it? At this point, it becomes clear that the limitation that attributes value to anything because it is a material object and "mine" is a human limitation.  Theodore is most hurt by his own possessiveness over Samantha who, by her essential non-material nature, cannot be owned. 

The transhuman aspects of this story are phenomenal, but going back to the fact that Samantha was a product bought by Theodore, the lesson for this brand designer is this: the ultimate brand will not only sell a weightless and invisible product but, wonderful and life-changing as it will be, it'll also be a brand that challenges humans' hardwired notions that we attribute value to things because they exist in the physical world and can therefore be owned.  The ultimate brand will sell an experience that transcends these limits and go beyond.  In other words, it'll sell Enlightenment.

Subjective luxury

This essay was published in Luxury Briefing in February 2014

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Value and subjectivism

by Alexander Gallé

February 2014

The idea of "enchantment-augmented" products certainly seems to have hit home with a few readers, judging by the unusual number of positive reactions to my last article.

Despite this, the value of the emotional connection as a core aspect of luxury brands seems to have not been captured in its full depth.  As a result, it is being thought of as just the icing on the cake, the core of the luxury industry being some kind of more intrinsic quality of the products.

There are two ways to approach this argument.  The first is to look at the exponential trend in technology, which I've been doing here at Luxury Briefing for a few years now.  The other is to look at the importance of subjectivity, and of subjective experience in other areas of our lives.

The first approach is, in my view, uncontestable.  I was born in the early 70s, when computers the size of your house only had a fraction of the computing power of your iPhone.  You only have to follow the evolution curve to understand that, in about 20 years, computers the size of your white blood cells are going to be 1,000 times more powerful than your iPhone.  The connectivity between them will be so complex that new levels of artificial intelligence will emerge out of their systems to create things that are as magic to you and me as today's iPhones would be to Isaac Newton.  What was a luxury item to the world's wealthiest man in 1913 is today available to billions of people around the planet.  What is a luxury item to the world's wealthiest man today will be available to billions of people around the planet in 2033.

The second approach takes a little more thinking about what it is that makes us happy, and what it is that makes us act, and interact.  Which provides me a happier and more memorable experience?  The plane journey that takes me to Lima an hour faster, or the plane journey that offers free broadband Wi-Fi access, great food, great wine, great coffee, polite stewardesses and courteous airport security?  Look at the online feedback and be blown away, as all customer comments are about subjective experiences: my seat was scruffy, my stewardess rude, my food tasted bland, my seat had no TV screen, we had no internet access and couldn't find out why our plane was delayed, etc.  The Stoics had it right: it's all about the effect experience has on our emotions.  Happily, there are a million things one could do in this field at a fraction of the cost of a faster plane.  For suppliers, therefore, luxury turns out to be the cheaper option.

The subjectivist approach goes much deeper, and there is, in my view, nobody who went deeper in our understanding of human interaction than the economist Ludwig von Mises did in his book "Human Action".  For Mises, all trade is based on subjective value.  In human affairs, there is no value other than subjective value.  The reason I trade my tie for your shirt is not that there is an equivalence between these two products, as classical economists would argue, it's that there is subjective improvement on both sides of the equation. Your shirt is more valuable to me, my tie is more valuable to you.  The money I earned working for you is more valuable to me than the time I lost, the product of my labour is more valuable to you than the money you paid me. 

All this aggregate value derived from millions of human interactions forms a matrix - a mesh as it were - of information that is, in its aggregate, objective.  For example, it'll tell you the market price of anything as defined by its comparison of value with everything else.  But the matrix's fabric, the stuff it is made of, is subjectivity.  Greater value is subjective value, and the greater price of luxury products reflects this.  Luxury is subjective.

Hacking products

This essay was published in Luxury Briefing in October 2013

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Hacking products

by Alexander Gallé

15 October 2013

Earlier this week, Rob Rhinehart, a young software engineer working in Silicon Valley, raised $1.5 million for his project from a group of investors led by Andreessen Horowitz, who are famous for their participation in some of the last decade's most successful internet startups, including Twitter, Facebook, Groupon, Instagram, Zynga, Airbnb, Foursquare and Skype.

Nothing unusual, you will say.  Internet startups get bigger funding than this almost every day...  Except that Rob's project isn't really an internet startup.  It's a food product.  In fact, it's the food product Rob decided to develop when he got tired of being distracted by the daily chore of having to buy food, prepare it, eat it, wash plates when he could be programming his other projects instead. 

Rob is the creator of Soylent, a food product that is engineered to contain every single nutrient your body needs to function properly.  It comes as a powder ("just add water"...) and he's been living on the stuff for the last 6 months.  That's not to say Soylent's intention is to replace food altogether, just to separate "food" from "feed".  "Food" is for when you're going to a restaurant, enjoying something delicious prepared by a professional.  "Feed" is for when all you need to do is feed your body the necessary nutrients, and Soylent is engineered to do just that. 

The aim is to make Soylent so cheap and ubiquitous that it'll be the answer to unhealthy junkfood as well as world hunger.  It'll solve the former, because unhealthy junkfood is consumed by a vast number of people simply because it is cheap.  It'll solve the latter, because reducing feed to its chemical elements solves many of the logistical issues currently impeding efficient production and distribution, dropping the cost of both to a fraction of what it currently is.  When economies of scale truly kick in, you'll be able to feed yourself in a healthier way than you currently are for less than $1 a day.

Lots of programmers think like this.  They see a problem in real life and wonder about the algorithm, the variables, the general model that could be constructed in order to understand- and hopefully solve- it.  Of course, other engineers do this too, but there's something about the immediacy of programming - programming is literally writing a product into existence - that puts one in a mindset in which it is much more natural and easy to move from "this could be fixed by doing X" to "I could fix this by doing X".  Before you know it, you've built yourself a prototype, tried it out on a few eager first adopters and put together a proposal to send to angel investors.  Massive growth through online popularisation of the concept ensures quick funding on further investment rounds.  Just a couple of years later, people around the world start wondering how they could ever have lived without your product.

I usually call this the hacker mindset, and what's interesting about its evolution over the last few years is that it's migrated from the minds of a few hackers improving the internet to a lot of other minds all set to improve the rest of our lives.  Everywhere around us, from Bitcoin to 3D printing to Soylent, young hacker entrepreneurs are redefining the game.  Their methods and findings are out in the open, whether it be through open source development or simple sharing of every aspect of the process.  Even their consumers get to participate in the next iteration, customising products and services to their own preferences, or simply shaping the value of the product as a whole by rating their experience of other users' services supplied through the product, as is the case with Airbnb (for accommodation services) and Uber (for driver services).

With such a major mindshift happening, it is unlikely that the variables currently defining even the most luxury-oriented products and services will stay relevant for very long.  Aside from the changing customer expectations of an entirely wired generation, the hacker mindset will change everything about the products and experiences the luxury sector provides, as it challenges the established methods of one sector after another with superior, more user friendly and more relevant products.   Mark my words: no stone will be left unturned.

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