Nicolas Rousseaux : "Luxury represents the highlights of our sensory system" - Interview

This interview is part of a project called Luxury Inception, see below to learn more about the project.

There are many ways to portrait Nicolas Rousseaux. He has been running his consulting firm Mediation for 20 years after working for McKinsey. He is a specialist in change management, among his clients are all prestigious corporations ranging from banking, services, industry, government and luxury. He is also a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and lecturer to executive courses in a couple of top higher education institutions in France, including ESSEC and Science Po.

He thinks that as globalization is increasingly penetrating each corner of the world, the issue that humankind is facing today - after the physical merge, is the cultural merge, or the cultures' co-existence rather. If we fail to release the misunderstandings that are rooted in specific cultural frameworks, the anxiety would be the biggest threat to the development of the entire human civilization. He attempts to make a contribution to making the cultural parts merge harmoniously.

He developed a profound curiosity towards China after his trip in 1981 while he was working for McKinsey in Japan. He was immediately obsessed with China and decided to focus his subsequent career on this country. It turns out his decision was a good one- he has literally witnessed the drastic changes that took place in China the last 3 decades. He has been working closely with Chinese businessmen and political institutions as well as think tanks. Moreover, he is eager to engage in the next phase of development for China.

Here is what he has to say about luxury.

How do you perceive luxury, as a concrete object or an abstract concept? How do you associate yourself with luxury?

N. R. : I believe luxury exists for two main reasons:

Luxury captures the need of each human being to connect with the Invisible World. Long time ago, the first tribes living inside mountains caves found some minerals with strange forms and covered them with mysterious pigments. Then they used these stones as magic powerful symbols. The ancestors of today jewelers felt we could not just let spirits flow freely in the air around us, we need to fix them into objects. So we will able to carry them as medium, to fulfill our hopes and escape our fears.

Luxury also represents the highlights of our sensory system. A flask of perfumes, some Flemish paintings, a Siberian fur, a three-stars restaurant, a cantata of Johann Sebastian Bach… all these extremely sophisticated materials connected together express our search for harmony with the universe. Through every act of the creation, lays a tentative goal for happiness, joy, passion, self-fulfillment. Prophetic and poetic at the same time, luxury embodies our quest for unique freedom, so man and history can match, and we can hang on a chance to surpass ourselves, at last.

What item would you be wiling to spend the majority of your fortune and time?

N. R. :Once, thirty years ago, on the southern coast of Bali island, I remember staying in a very special hotel. No sign outside, no welcome desk, no visible office, no credit card need to be copied, no valet parking, no crowd, no necessity to show a passport, no musak, no concierge looking at you behind a front desk, no keys, just one person was waiting there, a pretty woman coming slowly to us and saying “Welcome Mr Rousseaux. Let me show your bungalow.” That was it. Smile, silence and sobriety.

Same atmosphere inside the bungalow. No marketing tracks. I even remember in the bathroom, the shampoo had been put in a small “green glass” bottle, with a tiny cork on top. No sticker, no branding anywhere.I felt I was diving in an ecstatic dream, in an unbelievable mix of home and heaven feelings. That is what I call “fortune”.

What are you passionate about besides your profession (alter ego)?

N. R. : I cannot see a border anymore between my professional life and my private life. I’ve tried to build myself through love and friendship (trust, give & take), creation (children, entrepreneurship) and beliefs (respect, education). Every minute, each breath, is dedicated to this mix, which cannot be cut into pieces. The energy I need to fulfill myself hides in the juice of a million of passion fruits.

It means- learning, being enlightened, giving a hand to somebody in needs, discovering foreign countries, not being afraid, meeting people at the other side of the planet, all the time.

And, finally, sharing experience and knowledge through seven rules:

Stay open to permanent contextualization

Regain control on History and Communication with other civilizations

Learn how to navigate between certainty and uncertainty

Study roots, modalities and effects of incomprehension

Decipher errors and illusions

Measure how relationships between society and individuals evolve

Bring meanings to Human Beings

About The Luxury Inception project :

What does luxury mean ? What would a new vision of luxury be? These 2 intriguing questions cannot be answered in solely a few words neither do they have a unique answer.

We created The Luxury Inception Interviews to open the discussion and debate and to see if among all the subjective answers we get we can imagine a new definition of luxury.

We invited interviewees from various geographical regions, upbringings, educational backgrounds, ethnic groups, cultural cultivation and industries to experiment a new vision of luxury. Some of them are well-known to the public, some of them are well-respected in their fields and some of them are in the ascendence in reaching the next great accomplishment. Despite of the diversity of our selective guest interviewees, they share one thing in common - not only are they brilliant minds in the current globalized world but they are constantly in search for a profound comprehension of the world.

We are just excited as you are to find out what is going to come out from these precious testaments once we’ll attempt to decipher luxury in a rather different angle.

Please stay tuned, the future of luxury is unlocking right here.

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