Creating a Sense of Luxury
The power of your brand is not in what you do or create, it’s in how you make people feel. The secret to this rests in the symbols you use, which will create an emotional association with your product or service.
An excellent product or service is just the starting point. Luxury is symbolic and resonates with our dreams.
In this image, Georgia’s bare shoulders and the white silk sheets symbolise the purity of the pearls in the beautiful designer necklace. Her parted lips give a hint of sensuality which again attaches to the pearls and their power.
In this next photograph, Veronica’s gesture, carefully holding the tea leaves as though they are the most precious material. symbolises the quality of her speciality blended tea infusions. Her expression also helps to draw out a visceral reaction. We can’t smell the tea, but we feel as if we can.
Daria works on women’s health and wellbeing. The wind in her hair and clothes, as she stands on a high rock overlooking the Mediterranean, symbolises the freedom that comes with physical health and fitness.
Putting symbolism into your imagery isn’t about planting talismans (though at times that may be appropriate). It’s about connecting your product or service to something greater than its function.
That is the secret of every luxury brand.
Luxury Brands
Think about the brands that mean something to you. Adverts for luxury cars place the car on empty mountain roads to symbolise freedom; luxury clothes and jewellery use the opulent symbolism of country mansions, private jets and celebrity faces. Perfumes often cheat by putting the symbol in the name – Obsession, L’interdit (The Forbidden), Guilty.
The photographer who can endow your images with symbolism is the one who will communicate powerfully and emotionally with your audience without a word.
Colour Symbolism
Symbolism isn’t just in objects and places. Colour symbolism is just as important. After you’ve seen a certain colour used for a specific purpose often enough you associate it with that feeling.
Red is for warning, passion, violence, love. Blue is for melancholy, powerlessness if it’s very pale and vitality if it’s blue-green. Green can symbolise health or sickness depending on the shade and context.
Colour can be as strongly symbolic as floating dresses (freedom) and corsets (restraint).
Know Your Audience
In order to use symbolism effectively, you have to know your audience.
For instance, lawns symbolise luxury in very dry countries because they serve no function and are difficult to maintain where water is in short supply.
In the UK we take them for granted, but when I lived in Xi’an, China, lawns were rare. I saw families having picnics on a big main roundabouts because it had the luxury of a lawn. When I first saw it, I laughed, but after I’d been there for nine months I discovered a small piece of lawn at the university. The pleasure it gave me to take my shoes off and pad around barefoot on that verdant patch of grass was immeasurable.
So what is mundane to one group of people is luxury to another.
Symbolic Settings
The setting of your image plays a huge role. That’s why I love environmental portraits like the images above: Daria up high on a rock over the sea, Ellé in the red Triumph Spitfire, and Josephine on the country estate.
Location, weather and light help create a mood and emotion but they’re also symbolic. Stormy nights are unsettling, a split tree heralds a separation or a divided soul, calm waters restore balance, spring and autumn suggest a change.
Conscious Symbolism
Symbolism runs through our daily lives in ways we’re often unaware of. Small details tell you what another’s values are and, more significantly, whether theirs are aligned with yours.
Our clothes, homes and possessions are all symbols of our cultural values and identity and they connect us with like-minded people.
The symbolism you use will determine your success as a luxury brand. Your product or service must be exemplary, but that alone is not enough. Many geniuses have failed because they couldn’t attach a symbol to their product.
Ralph Lauren once said,
And that’s what I help people portray through imagery – dreams, desires, aspirations – that is to say, feelings.
Visit Nina Carrington to see more images like these. If you’d like help bringing symbolism into your photographs, please email nina@ninacarrington.com for a free consultation.
