I was standing at the window, looking at the dress. It was strange. Almost awkward. With an asymmetric hem and a neckline that seemed to begin in a past life and end in the next. I sighed, remembering Barcelona — that summer when the wind tossed my hair, and my friend said, “You look like a woman who doesn’t explain herself.” That day I wore a simple dress made of thick linen, slightly sun-bleached. Cherry tint on the lips, a thin silk scarf on my neck like a trace of what was left unsaid. And just one earring. The second one was lost that morning, but I decided: let it be a story. Gil appeared behind me, peering at the dress like it was not a garment but a philosophical question. “Hmm, I don’t know,” she mumbled. “You should try it on. Or ask someone.” I pulled out my notebook from my bag, smiled and said, “Does Hermès ask anyone?” I went to the fitting room alone. Like a woman who doesn’t conduct surveys before falling in love. After the fitting room, we headed to a café. Talked about kids, apartments, investments in AI. I stayed quiet. Then pulled out my worn-out copy of The Luxury Strategy, found the right page, underlined with a pencil, and read aloud: “Do not test.” And added, “Because luxury is a prophecy. Not a referendum.” “But what about feedback?” asked Aline, tossing her hair back. “Feedback is for brands that don’t know who they are,” I answered, looking at my own reflection in the window glass. “And do you?” Aline leaned toward me, as if my eyes could be a screen for her answers. I paused for a second. And for the first time that day, I felt: yes. I do. I remembered a man. The one who, before every date, would ask: “Are you sure you want Japanese food?” “Will it be okay if I wear jeans?” “Tell me if anything’s wrong — I’ll adjust.” He was… perfect. And unbearable. There was no risk in him. No shape of his own. Only reaction. Like brands that use focus groups instead of creating the future. True luxury is not about being liked. It’s about offering — without asking for permission.
I remembered those sandals. The ones with the absurd bow, the unstable platform, and the price tag that made my card tremble. Aline had said: “Are you sure?” I said: “No. But I’m in.” And that night, when I walked down Broadway, people shouted: “Goddess!” “Where are those shoes from?” “You walk like you rule this city!” And that wasn’t the result of testing. It was the effect of belief. I reread: “Testing means that the decisions of the luxury brand are subject to the taste of the consumers.” And I thought: Jean-Noël, what if a woman is a brand? Then every time she asks, “Tell me what’s better,” — she loses her shape. I came home, took off the dress, hung it over the back of a chair. It was strange. And I knew — no one would’ve picked it in a vote. But tomorrow, I’ll wear it. Because true luxury isn’t consensus. It’s presence without apologies.

The class started at seven. I arrived without a partner, but with a book. Kapferer, in a worn leather sleeve, still lay at the bottom of my bag — somewhere between perfume, a lip pencil, and a useless Louvre ticket. I pulled it out, opened to a random page — and as if by chance, I heard: “Luxury brands are built on a long-term time frame… managing short-term profitability while preserving long-term desirability.” I circled the phrase with an old pencil that barely writes anymore, but I keep using it to underline things. And I thought: isn’t that exactly how we women live? We build ourselves for years ahead. But we must be desirable — every single day. Even when our stomach aches, even when we don’t feel like talking. Even after we’ve just cried. Or the opposite — when we’re so happy we don’t fit inside the frame. Still: be desirable. And at the same time — profitable. My partner turned out to be surprisingly young. There was something soft and steely in him at once. He held my back like he already knew how it needed to align, and his touch wasn’t a touch — it was an offer. I felt ashamed. Not because of the closeness — but because of how long it had been since I’d felt in sync with someone’s rhythm. Tango is about listening. Not to the music. To the other. His spine. His pauses. His softness. And everything he won’t say, but that still speaks. I could hear his palm tremble. How he lightly squeezed my fingers when stepping forward. How his breath shifted when I guessed the move. And at some point — I realized that the body, too, is rhetoric. Not a body for the sake of body. A body as a statement. As a letter. As a brand built over years but sold in three seconds. The first glance. The first step. The first dance. I remembered my first Dior bag. Not because it was expensive — but because I didn’t know how to carry it. I slouched, I held it tight, I was embarrassed. I didn’t feel worthy. And one day, my then-lover said: “You have to carry it like it’s an extension of you. Not something you’re hiding.” Tango is the same. If you carry yourself like a mistake, you won’t land. But if you dance yourself — you’ll be remembered. I stepped back. Then forward. Then sideways. And suddenly — I wasn’t thinking. I was just being. And my partner — was no longer a stranger. We didn’t ask each other anything. But we said everything. Through pauses. Through the weight of a hip. Through a gaze that demanded no reply. That was luxury. Not the dress. Not the lesson’s price. But the fact that I was seen — and I was seeing. Without voice. Without a post. Without validation. And I thought: Kapferer, what if brands aren’t objects? What if they’re relationships? Maybe a luxury brand preserves its desirability not because it’s rare — but because it’s recognizable. Like a touch. Like an intonation. Like a dance. We danced for twenty minutes. I don’t remember a single step. But I remember how he held my hand at the very end. And how long we stood there before letting go. After class, I stepped outside. It was warm, but not hot. The wind touched my cheeks like wine touches the tongue. The streets felt washed, fresh — like after tears. On the corner, someone was selling roses. Red, like lips in a bad film. I bought one — just because. Not for anyone. For myself. I walked slowly. Didn’t feel like talking. Didn’t even feel like thinking. Just walking, as if my body was still dancing and my thoughts were lagging behind. Kapferer’s book was in my hands again. I opened it to the same page. Still about desirability. About time. About profit. And suddenly, I felt a sting: what if I am a brand too? My style. My voice. My fears. My desires. And the way I come back — after defeats, after broken heels, after betrayals. What if my soul is a long-term strategy too? We earn short-term profits sometimes, don’t we? Relationships we don’t want to be in. Roles that exhaust us. Masks we’ve long wanted to take off. We play the “good girl” for approval. We settle for less — just so we’re not alone. But inside, the same question keeps burning: what will be left when all this has been consumed?I remembered a friend who once told me how she left her husband. She didn’t cry. She was ironing his shirt when it hit her: “I don’t want to be this woman. Even if it’s comfortable.” She didn’t scream. She didn’t make a scene. She just packed a suitcase. And later she told me: “I thought I was dying. But it turned out — it was a renaissance.” And brands — they die too. And are born again. Like women. Like desires.
I sat on a bench by the square. My overnight bag at my feet. The rose — on my knees. People passed by. Couples. Students. Someone carrying a cake. Someone — a parrot in a cage. And I suddenly realized that in that moment — I needed nothing. Not love. Not an object. Not a text. Just to be. And maybe that’s how true luxury is measured: in the ability not to strive. Just to stand. To listen. To be — and to know that you are worthy. Not because you have something. But because you are. I pulled out my old pencil. Underlined the word “desirability” in Kapferer’s book. And wrote in the margin: “I am desirable not because I perform, but because I remain.” And maybe — that is my most honest brand.

I arrived in Saint Petersburg under a snowfall that felt ancient, as if it were supposed to fall slowly so as not to disturb the frame. Everything here seemed part of a set design—even the driver who met me by the Moika looked like a character from Chekhov, with eyes reflecting the treads of war and the brake lights of an empire. I stayed in a room with a balcony over the Neva, in a hotel that smelled of parquet lacquer, chokeberry tincture, and powder someone had sprinkled into the air in 1983 and never cleared away. It was chilly, as it should be in a city where even candelabras stand their ground stubbornly—like ideas no one has managed to cancel. I pulled out my worn copy of Kapferer, from which fell an old bookmark—a scrap of paper with a phone number scribbled on the back of a boarding pass from Zurich. I think it belonged to a jeweler who once told me on a flight that there would be no more diamonds. I smirked and, as always, took a pencil out of the Chanel lipstick case—the same one that smells of vanilla and crumbs of longing. I underlined the sentence: “For a concert pianist, the money received for playing is not enough. What the pianist also wants (and even wants above all if the person is a true artist) is the public’s applause.” And I thought: what about a writer? The kind who lives in New York, in a house where the fireplace sometimes burns not letters, but ideas that didn’t survive the morning light? Sometimes it feels like I’m performing too. My stories are solo piano pieces, and each time I walk onto a stage where the audience doesn’t applaud—but scrolls. Where ovations are replaced by reactions. Where every like is like a dry cough from the back row. And yet I go on. I write like a pianist plays: even if the keys have lost their varnish and the hall is full of ghosts.
I went to the Hermitage the next morning. It was Friday, and the city was wet with melted decadence. My boots clattered on the pavement, and I suddenly remembered a man in Paris who said you could tell by the sound of a woman’s heels whether she was walking toward art—or away from it. I said nothing then, because I didn’t know the answer. Now—I do. I was walking toward it. In the Hermitage courtyard it smelled of stone dust and a hint of marmalade—perhaps an illusion, but I like when museums smell like childhood. I ascended the grand staircase slowly, as if climbing not steps, but notes. Inhale, exhale. Inhale—Rembrandt. Exhale—Velázquez. Everything was too real to breathe fast. I found myself in a portrait hall. One of the portraits—a male one, strict, measured—stopped me. I didn’t remember the artist’s name, but the man’s gaze was the same as my first editor’s: he looked at you like a text that isn’t ready yet, but might become a masterpiece. And I stood before him like a pianist before a score: slightly guilty, slightly defiant. And very alone. In that moment I understood: it doesn’t matter how much you earn from a book. It doesn’t matter if the rights were bought in Japan. It doesn’t matter how many times your text was quoted in magazines no one finishes. What matters is that someone—even just one person—stands in front of your portrait and feels that strange blend of reverence and aching closeness. What matters is that someone, having read your story, suddenly remembers the smell of their grandmother’s bedroom or the sound of that one kiss in a kitchen in April. That’s applause.
I sat on a bench, placed Kapferer beside me, and pulled out a notebook. Not for notes this time, but to give myself permission to just be a viewer. I watched women pass the paintings—in furs, on phones, with children on leashes. Some paused, froze, took pictures. But there was one—with grey hair and a navy scarf—who didn’t photograph anything. She just looked. And in her gaze I saw the silent ovation Kapferer once wrote about. Later, at a café across from the museum, I ordered coffee and gooseberry tart. At the next table sat an old man with an accent, leafing through a newspaper and muttering: “It’s not about the price… it’s about the silence after the purchase…” —and I didn’t know whether he meant money or love. I thought: maybe everything in my life is a sentence from Kapferer. I don’t sell a text—I sell the experience: the path to it, the way it’s read, the shadow it leaves behind. On the way back to the hotel, I passed a bookstall. A woman was flipping through postcards. I imagined someone someday flipping through my stories the same way—as postcards from cities they’ve never been to, but feel in their skin.
In the room I lit a candle and opened the book again. Kapferer, as always, was beside me. On the cover—a pencil mark, in the margins—a teardrop from the Rome airport. I wrote:
“Today I stood in a hall full of art and for the first time felt like part of something eternal. Not because I am talented. But because I know how to feel. And to share that feeling.”
And maybe, just maybe, that’s what applause really is. I hadn’t noticed how the snow outside had started falling again—not the kind for postcards, but the kind that drifts down in weary flakes, like memories you’re no longer sure about. I think I’d been sitting in that armchair—by the window, across from the fireplace grate—for hours. My shadow remained in the Hermitage: watching, absorbing, leaving a faint trail of perfume in the air—a mix of tobacco, cedar, and book. I don’t know exactly where I learned to leave scent where a thought once was. Maybe it’s just a style. On the nightstand lay three things: my phone, with notifications turned off; an old issue of Numéro, bookmarked with a napkin from Café de Flore; and Kapferer’s book, its spine worn and stained with cherry sauce from Madrid. I always carry it with me. I don’t know where my diary ends and The Luxury Strategy begins. Sometimes I feel like I live as a footnote in his book: “see also page 83, if you want to understand why you’re still in this industry.”
I remembered a moment from the Hermitage—when a child, maybe six years old, suddenly stopped in front of Catherine the Great’s portrait and said: “That grandma was important, right?” His mother laughed. I didn’t. I thought: what about me? Will I ever be on a portrait someone stops in front of and understands that to be important doesn’t mean to be famous? It means to be heard. Even if your voice is in a book no one finished reading. I know women who buy €10,000 handbags but are afraid to ask for a raise. And I know those who live in one-room flats facing construction sites but look at themselves in the mirror like icons. That too—is luxury. Luxury as inner verticality. As the posture you maintain even when walking in heels over February ice. I stepped out for a walk. Nevsky Avenue was full of headlights, and each car looked like a candle flame on a birthday cake that no one celebrates. In the bookstore window I saw my reflection—ankle-length coat, cashmere scarf, a gaze carrying the phrase: “don’t rush yourself.” I went inside, and the elderly bookseller asked, “Can I help you with anything? “Yes,” I said, “can you tell me how to stop doubting that I’ve earned my applause?”
He smiled the way only people can who have lived through both gourmet shops and grand operas. On the shelf stood a book titled The Art of Being No One. I thought: isn’t that, in essence, real freedom? When you could be anyone—but choose to be yourself. Even if yourself means a woman who writes pieces that are only read at night. A woman whose bag holds a plane ticket to Tbilisi, a perfume with a heliotrope note, and an old letter from her mother that says: “You’ve always known how to stay whole. When I returned to the hotel, the door to my room looked taller than it had in the morning. I felt that I had become heavier today—by a few grams. A few grams of light that stayed in me after the gaze of that woman in the gallery. A few grams of pride for not cutting out the hardest parts of the text. A few grams of guilt—for still thinking about him, the man from Montreux, who once said to me: “You want love, but you want to be paid for it.” I laughed then. But now—I understand. Maybe he was right. Maybe we all want applause, but only a few are honest enough to admit it.
Before bed, I opened Kapferer again. This time—a page where he writes about brand power. About how a brand shouldn’t respond to demand, but shape it. And I wrote in my notebook: “What if I’m a brand too? But not a product. A resonance. I don’t sell myself. I resonate. If someone hears me—they’ve bought me. The rest—just passed by.”
That was my last night in Saint Petersburg. In the morning—a flight to Zurich, then back to New York, to my townhouse. There, a room waits for me where everything is arranged like a score: fireplace, books, a hat stand, a window overlooking a park where April is already blooming. But now—it’s February. And I’m here. Alone. With the silence echoing with halls, portraits, and a single sentence: “Applause is a currency too. But not everyone knows how to cash it in.”