Since the 18th century, this impulse has taken shape as a tradition. Families who created wealth began building a system of succession: family art collections, libraries, architectural ensembles, philanthropic foundations. Wealth ceased to be individual and became dynastic. The owner no longer simply bought paintings—they were building "aesthetic capital," which spoke to their education, taste, and mission. It was then that the concept of heritage emerged as a category of time management.

In the 19th century, the first institutions emerged that bestowed upon luxury the status of a managed asset. Auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s established standards for art valuation. Banks began insuring collections, and lawyers started developing inheritance schemes for rare items. Art entered the financial system, yet it did not lose its metaphysical quality. It remained a symbol of stability, a cultural equivalent of gold, but with the added value of meaning.

Today, we live in an era where the concept of a luxury asset has expanded to unprecedented boundaries. It is no longer confined to paintings, watches, or vintage cars. The sphere of management now encompasses wellness homes, architectural ensembles, club spaces, digital collections, even personal health ecosystems. The focus is not merely on ownership, but on the ability to create and sustain a holistic lifestyle.

According to the Global Wellness Institute, the wellness real estate market was valued at approximately $ 584 billion in 2024 and is projected to approach $ 1 trillion by 2029. It is the fastest-growing segment of premium real estate. But the key here is not the figures, but the meaning: wellness homes represent a new type of asset where aesthetics merge with biology. Architecture ceases to be merely a façade and becomes an extension of the body, its protective shell. In such projects, what matters is not the marble or the brand of the fixtures, but air quality, acoustics, light spectrum, sleep quality, and the biorhythm of the environment.

Luxury has ceased to be about "having." It has become about "living." This is the fundamental shift in modern asset management — from managing things to managing a state of being. The collectibles market is also experiencing a renaissance of meaning. According to the Art Basel & UBS report, global art sales reached approximately $ 57.5 billion in 2024, declining after the exceptionally high-yield years but maintaining remarkable stability. The interesting part is different: the number of transactions increased, while the average ticket size decreased. This points to a democratization of the market and a return to genuine collecting — not for speculation, but for meaning. Today, collectors are not just buying paintings; they are buying stories. They seek "emotional ROI" — a return in the form of identity, intellectual pleasure, and a sense of inner connection.

The younger generation of collectors—entrepreneurs, IT investors, designers—often builds collections as an extension of their personal narrative: digital art coexists with ancient artifacts, NFTs alongside vintage photography, and heritage objects serve as anchors in a fast-paced world. This gives rise to a new type of management. In it, a financial analyst works alongside a curator, while an art historian teams up with an architect and a wellness consultant. The modern family office for ultra-wealthy clients increasingly resembles a mini-cultural institute, where, alongside investment strategies, projects in conservation, restoration, cultural collaborations, and philanthropy are conducted.

But why exactly have wellness spaces become the core of this new type of capital? The answer is simple: health has become the new status. In a society where information overloads the brain and stress has become a chronic currency, the ability to preserve energy, concentration, and clarity has become the highest form of luxury. A home with an air purification system, personalized lighting scenarios, antibacterial architecture, and private silence is worth more than any tower in the city center.

Such homes don’t just display a standard of living—they guarantee its quality. This is not a symbol, but a tool for preserving a resource. And that is precisely why wellness development is growing so rapidly: it addresses a profound fear of time—the fear of losing health, energy, and attention. Modern luxury is not about glitter, but about peace. Not about speed, but about rhythm. Luxury asset management in this context becomes something more than a portfolio. It is an ecosystem where everything is connected. The painting on the wall is part of emotional well-being. The garden in front of the house is part of therapy. The wine collection is part of a philosophy of pleasure. All of this requires management that is not only legal but also meaningful.

Family offices specializing in UHNW clients are increasingly hiring not only lawyers and financial consultants but also art directors, cultural experts, and wellness design specialists. Their task is not to multiply capital, but to preserve harmony. Because harmony has become the new currency of trust. The modern asset owner wants not merely to own, but to feel. They choose objects with a story behind them: a family estate restored with consideration for the historical landscape; a collection of contemporary art integrated into the home’s architecture; a house where air is purified according to principles of bionic engineering. All these forms are different facets of the same concept: the management of beauty.

At this level, luxury ceases to be a "thing." It becomes a philosophy of time. The person managing these assets becomes a sort of curator of their own destiny. Their task is not to accumulate, but to build a system of meanings that will outlive them. That’s why the reports of modern private offices increasingly feature new metrics alongside columns on liquidity and diversification: a heritage index, emotional return, cultural footprint, level of environmental impact. In this sense, luxury asset management today resembles the art of conducting. One must balance the material and the spiritual, value and liquidity, comfort and eternity. After all, a house without a soul loses its worth, just as a collection without context does.

"True luxury is a space where one can be oneself," architect Patricia Urquiola once said. This statement has become the new formula for capital. After all, the art of possession is the art of freedom: the ability not only to acquire but also to release, not only to collect but also to pass on. Managing luxury is, in essence, managing the future. After all, collections, wellness homes, family estates, clubs, and foundations are not merely assets, but forms of memory. They preserve what cannot be insured—the spirit of the time, gestures, taste, atmosphere. And the more complex the world becomes, the higher the value of these intangible connections.

Luxury asset management is not a spreadsheet in Excel, but a philosophy of continuity. It is a way to build a bridge between generations. It is a new art of balance, where value is measured not by a number, but by the depth of meaning. Today, as luxury transcends the material, it becomes clear: wealth can be managed in different ways. But true mastery lies in being able to manage what gives it a soul. Collections and wellness spaces are merely manifestations of this principle. They unite past and future, aesthetics and science, body and spirit.

"We do not own things, we own attention," said the philosopher of modern design, Jonathan Ive. Perhaps herein lies the new formula for luxury: not in possession, but in conscious living. And thus, managing luxury today is not about wealth, but about wisdom. About the ability to see beauty in details, to manage time, and to transform the material into the eternal. This is not simply working with assets. It is the art of being.

The world of luxury in 2025 increasingly resembles not a market, but a living organism. In it, money circulates together with energy, meaning, and emotion. And if before, a successful person took pride in the number of paintings, now they take pride in the quality of air in their home and the time spent in silence. If before a portfolio contained only assets, now it contains attention, relationships, and experience.

Luxury has always been a mirror of its era. It spoke not so much about wealth, but about a worldview — about how a person understands time, beauty, power, and themselves. Today, as the familiar hierarchy of values has shifted, luxury is once again changing its form. It is ceasing to be a demonstration of excess and is becoming a subtle system for managing meaning — a conscious strategy for preserving capital in all its dimensions: material, cultural, physical, and emotional.

Author: Daria Arkhipova

Luxury asset management is not just a term from the private banking lexicon. It is a new philosophy of ownership, in which collections, architecture, wellness spaces, heritage, and personal time become part of a single ecosystem. Managing luxury today means managing attention, lifestyle, and the depth of human experience.

Historically, it all began long before banking terms emerged. The first "luxury assets" were born in 16th-century Europe, when scholars and aristocrats created *cabinets de curiosités* — cabinets of curiosities. They stored not money, but knowledge, wonders of nature, rare stones, mechanical clocks, paintings, and books. These were the first private museums — spaces where capital transformed into culture. Around the same time, the notion arose that owning an object required a philosophy: one needed to understand its origin, meaning, and context. The collector became a curator, and wealth became a tool for understanding the world.

Towards the end of the 20th century, new players entered the market — art consultants, curators, family offices. Funds investing in art emerged, along with art market indices, provenance databases, and methods of digital authentication. For the first time, luxury became transparent, measurable, and manageable. Yet, with this came a new responsibility: to preserve uniqueness without turning it into a dry financial instrument.