Luxury Is Not What You Think

When I was a child in Lithuania, luxury looked like trifting by the kilo at Humana. A new dress felt like a miracle. If something was brand-new, store-bought, it was a celebration. Everything else was inherited, exchanged, passed down, or scavenged. I never met “luxury” in person — I met accumulation, secondhand bargains, relative scarcity.

That context shaped me: I grew up measuring my worth by how little I could get by with, and dreaming of a day I wouldn’t have to.

Generational Dissonance & the Speed of Change

My grandmother’s generation lived under Soviet scarcity. Her adulthood was defined by ration cards, queues, empty shelves. Survival was luxury. My childhood was a transition: post-Soviet imports, 1990s bazaars, colorful knits brought from abroad, everything a little unsettled. My adulthood — Boston, Singapore, Thailand — brought globalization, credit cards, cross-continental shopping, and the visceral possibility of owning what once felt impossible.

That swing — from scarcity to possibility in two generations — is dizzying. It gives me whiplash when I scroll resale apps, hear the price of goods, or feel how people respond to me differently when I carry Dior vs when I carry Humana finds.

Socioeconomic data confirms this fracturing:

• Since independence, Lithuania’s GDP per capita has more than tripled.

• The consumer credit market has grown by double digits annually.

• Luxury brands are in Vilnius: flagship stores, designer resale markets, boutique shops.

Yet the cultural memory lags behind the LED screens. Many still feel apprehension, guilt, or confusion about what to display and what to hide.

The Performance of Casual Luxury

In my early adult years, I believed luxury was to make it look like it didn’t matter. To step into Dior or Gucci and act unaffected — to wink, not scream. I bought statement pieces and told myself the quiet life was the classiest front. I wore designer watches, carried statement bags, and told myself indifference was my armor.

Then one day — before moving to Singapore — I lost a $10,000 Dior watch in a taxi. I retraced, asked, searched. And when I realized it was gone, instead of collapsing, I just paused. Took a breath. Inhaled. Exhaled. “Here’s your test: do you believe things are just things?” I did not cry. I stayed. That was my first real taste of detachment.

The luxury hadn’t left me — but my need for it had softened.

Thailand: A Mirror of Less

In Thailand I lived for months on budgets of $3/day. I walked past neighbors in makeshift homes, chickens, rainwater barrels. Floors were optional. I chose between feeding myself or feeding my dog. In that world, jewelry felt too loud. Branded items felt disrespectful. I never wore my gold chain. I shrank my privilege. I survived with dignity, not spectacle.

That period rewired my orientation. Luxury became: survival, care, priority, presence. It was the deepest purification of what I thought style and identity needed to be.

Returning to Lithuania, Returning to Tension

So when I returned to Lithuania, I came not as someone who left, but as someone changed. I came back with a Dior tote, but also with memory, contradiction, question. I noticed how someone in a designer tote gets extra warmth in a café. Someone in casual clothes is invisible. That differential attention unsettles me — not because I resent it, but because it reminds me how much performance we live by.

In this contradiction I live: I still love luxury, but I want it to feel quiet. Sometimes I hide my designer pieces. Sometimes I let a Dior bag ride the bus to Maxima because the juxtaposition is real and strange and telling.

Identity in Flux: Millennials in Transition

We’re generations born between scarcity and abundance, between Soviet shadows and global capitalism. We saw dial-up modems, then fiber internet. We played with bubble wrap and then ordered curated e-commerce. We watched our parents’ dreams deferred and then saw their grandchildren with iPhones. We carry both eras in our spines.

This means identity is often unstable. We are constantly redeeming the past, reconciling our roots, and revising our dreams. We scroll resale apps while remembering the kilos of Humana racks. We keep receipts from Paris shopping trips while wondering if someone will call us “pretentious.” We learn to love our contradictions more than our certainties.

What Luxury Means Now

Let me try to name what luxury means to me now:

• The freedom to shut off desire when I want.

• The agency to choose what to display, when to hide.

• The grace to be generous without performing.

• The ease of loving without needing applause.

• The humility to wear something beautiful for me, not for them.

Luxury is perspective. It isn’t about Dior closets or Humana racks. It’s how lightly you can carry what you own, while carrying who you are. I am still a “material girl in a material world.” But now — I decide when, how, and to whom I show.