Everyone Looks Premium
Premium as the New Mediocrity
Walking down the street, looking at shop signs or just observing the people around me, I’ve increasingly noticed that over the past few years, the world has become astonishingly beautiful. No - not just beautiful. Thoughtful. Meticulously crafted down to the smallest detail. Everything, from yogurt packaging to the interior of a neighborhood barbershop, seems to have passed through the hands of professional designers. We live in an era where nearly every product has its own aesthetic and atmosphere, and on the surface, this seems like our greatest achievement and joy. But herein lies the problem: visual perfection has ceased to be a privilege of the few and has become the norm. Everyone has access to premium designs - and because of that, their value inevitably declines.
Just twenty years ago, today’s commonplace items were accessible only to a very limited few. Today, even a local barbershop tries to look like a five-star hotel in the center of a European city. Count the times you think, “Yes, I’ve seen this pattern before”: minimalist logo, stylized sans-serif font, muted tones, “natural materials.” Doesn’t it feel like universal access to premium aesthetics has turned premium itself into mediocrity?
The problem isn’t that beauty has become accessible. The problem is that behind flawless exteriors, emptiness often hides. Nothing stops a café with a million-dollar interior from cheerfully serving instant coffee, or a chocolate bar with striking packaging from delivering something utterly ordinary. On the surface, everything seems fine - the consumer willingly pays for the illusion of quality, for the feeling of being part of the “upper class.” But this isn’t a game that ten out of ten people can play - and when everyone plays, the game simply loses its original meaning.
The main issue with modern premium is that it destroys individuality. Expensive items used to stand out for the creator’s signature and the story behind them. Today, all you have to do is open Pinterest, type in “luxury branding,” and you’ll see thousands of projects indistinguishable from one another, like star clones. All of them are frighteningly premium, yet as if produced on the same machine that a horde of dementors once passed over, leaving no trace of soul or originality.
And this problem doesn’t just affect consumers: designers are afraid to deviate from proven formulas because “premium” must look “premium,” and “premium” basically means “like that brand over there.” The result? The market becomes a kingdom of mirrors: identical business cards, interchangeable websites - wherever you look, one seamlessly replaces another. When everyone strives to appear exceptionally rich and luxurious, the system starts to resemble an ouroboros, devouring itself.
This raises the question: what is true luxury today? We believe it is not premium packaging, not black-and-gold aesthetics, not Cartier on both wrists. True luxury is the courage to be imperfect, the ability to act differently from everyone else. Not following glossy mainstream trends, but charting your own course. In a plastic world where everything looks more luxurious than the palaces of Byzantine emperors, the only truly valuable and irreplaceable currency is honesty - yes, that very openness that requires zero budget.
Perhaps it’s time to stop chasing perfection. Isn’t it time to remember that a product’s value has never been determined by its wrapper? True premium is when form matches content. When behind a beautiful image stands a real person, just like the rest of us, not trying to put on a mask of rose-gold. Everything else is just another template in the endless feed of painfully uniform “luxury.”
