"Accessible luxury"
I heard it again the other day. A founder, bright-eyed and excited about her future, pitching a jewelry line said, "it is an accessible luxury brand."
My brain stopped right there.
To me, that is an oxymoron designed to make the middle class feel wealthy and the wealthy feel safe.
Now, the marketing textbooks? They’ll tell you it’s genius. They’ll tell you about the rising middle class, desperate to show the world they’ve made it. They call it "masstige."
But see, they’re missing the point. Because "accessible" is a relative term. You have to ask the fundamental questions: Accessible to whom? Who is allowed to touch? Who is allowed to enter the shop?
In New York, accessibility is a question of your credit limit. Can you stretch that Amex? But in India? It’s geological. It is layered with centuries of sediment. Caste. Color. Surname. The zip code you were born in.
The laziness of language
Now, I’m not saying this founder is evil. She’s not. She’s just… sleepwalking. She’s repeating a script written by copywriters who think history started when Steve Jobs walked onto a stage with an iPhone.
But when you use a word like "accessible" in a country defined by exclusion, you are talking about open doors in a society that is still rigorously, violently hierarchical.
You need to do the work. Brands need writers. Real writers. People who read books.
You need people who know who Dr. Ambedkar is. You need to understand that when that man put on a three-piece suit, it was a political statement. He was fighting a caste system that historically dictated exactly what Dalits could and could not wear.
When brands ignore this context, they view India as a flat, frictionless market. They see a billion people and see a billion potential transactions. But the social geography of this country has not changed nearly as much as the retail geography has.
You think I’m exaggerating? You think this is the past?
Look at June 2025. In the Ganjam district of Odisha, two Dalit men were assaulted, their heads shaved, and they were made to crawl on the ground. Why? Because they transgressed unwritten social boundaries.
We have a Constitution. It was ratified in 1950. It abolished untouchability. Yet, tens of thousands of caste-based crimes are reported every single year. The violence of "who is allowed to touch what" is a daily reality.
This is where the laziness of language becomes a business liability. When a luxury brand markets itself on "accessibility," it is speaking to a consumer base that is increasingly aware of these dynamics. The new Indian consumer is political, connected, and critical.
So, what is the alternative?
If "accessible" is a dirty word, how do brands invite the middle class in? The answer lies in dropping the euphemisms.
Don’t tell me it’s accessible. Tell me it’s beautiful. Tell me it’s honest. Tell me who made it, and pay them fairly. And tell me who you are actually inviting to the table.