Drawing on decades of consumer psychology research, Langa argues that status signalling isn't about taste hierarchies but about context: where wealth is entrenched, discretion becomes an insider language; where success is hard-won and historically denied, visibility serves a rational, powerful function.

This challenges luxury brands operating across Africa to stop treating the continent as a market that needs educating and start recognising that loud and quiet luxury are equally intelligent responses to different social realities. The piece offers rare insight from someone with key insights into luxury ecosystems across Europe, the Americas and Africa, with direct implications for brands seeking authentic growth in African markets.

Luxury is often spoken about as if it were universal. As though taste travels cleanly across borders. As though restraint is inherently refined, and visibility inherently naïve. Yet when we look closely at how consumers express success across Europe and Africa, it becomes clear that luxury is not simply about preference. It is about context, history, and what success must do in different societies.

In many European markets, understated luxury dominates. Logos are discreet, craftsmanship is coded, and recognition is reserved for those already fluent in the language of belonging. Across large parts of Africa, however, luxury is often worn visibly. Designer brands are more prominent, more expressive, more public. To some global observers, this contrast is dismissed as flashy or unsophisticated.

That reading is not only inaccurate. It is intellectually lazy.

Status Signalling is Not About Taste, It is About Stability

Decades of consumer psychology research show that the way people signal status shifts depending on their social and economic environment. Studies on brand prominence and inconspicuous consumption consistently find that subtle luxury signals emerge most strongly in societies where wealth is entrenched, class structures are relatively stable, and social position is rarely questioned.

In these contexts, discretion becomes valuable precisely because belonging is assumed.

Across much of Europe, wealth has accumulated over generations. Status, while not immune to change, is often inherited rather than newly earned. In this environment, quiet luxury functions as an insider language. It does not announce success, it confirms it to those already inside the room.

This is not a higher form of taste. It is a by-product of historical stability.

Visibility in Africa is Not Insecurity, It is Legibility

Across many African markets, visible luxury plays a fundamentally different role. Research on status signalling shows that in societies characterised by higher inequality and real but contested social mobility, consumers are more likely to invest in visible markers of success. This behaviour is not driven by vanity, but rather by function.

Where progress is hard-won, success must be legible. It must withstand scrutiny. It must be recognised not only privately, but publicly.

For many first-generation professionals and entrepreneurs across the continent, luxury is not an indulgence. It is a statement of arrival. It signals that the odds were navigated, that barriers were crossed, and that new possibilities now exist, not just for the individual, but often for the family and community that stand behind them.

A luxury watch in Zurich whispers, "I belong".
The same watch in Lagos, Johannesburg or Accra often says, "We made it".

That distinction matters.

The Unspoken Hierarchy of "Good Taste"

What global luxury discourse rarely interrogates is who gets to define what good taste looks like.

European restraint is frequently framed as timeless, effortless and refined. African expressiveness is more readily described as loud, excessive or aspirational. Yet cultural sociology has long argued that taste is not neutral. It is a form of power, a mechanism through which dominant groups normalise their preferences as universal standards.

When African consumers adopt European codes of restraint, it is often praised as sophistication. When they do not, it is treated as a developmental phase to outgrow.

Research does not support this hierarchy. It shows that signalling adapts rationally to context. Loud and quiet luxury are not moral opposites. They are tools optimised for different social terrains.

Post-Colonial Consumption as Self-Definition

In post-colonial societies, consumption carries additional symbolic weight. Scholars of globalisation and identity have shown that in contexts shaped by historical exclusion, modern consumption becomes a site of self-definition rather than mere acquisition.

Luxury brands in African markets do not simply represent wealth. They represent access, agency and participation in global modernity on one's own terms. Visibility, in this sense, is not mimicry of the West. It is a reassertion of self in a world that long denied African consumers both visibility and authorship.

To read this behaviour as insecurity is to misunderstand its historical depth.

A Continent in Motion, Not a Stereotype

It would be equally reductive to suggest that Africa expresses luxury in a single way. As wealth deepens and elite circles mature across African capitals, forms of understated consumption are increasingly visible. Quiet luxury is emerging not as imitation, but as counter-signal, a natural evolution as visibility becomes widespread.

This matters. It reframes Africa not as behind Europe, but as moving through its own trajectory of expression. Luxury evolves as context evolves. Sophistication is not imported. It is earned through experience.

Perspective Earned From Inside the Luxury Ecosystem

These distinctions are not theoretical. They are patterns observed repeatedly from within the luxury ecosystem itself.

At Leagas Delaney, our work has placed us inside some of the most established luxury systems across Europe and the Americas, while increasingly engaging with African markets where luxury is still actively negotiating its meaning. That vantage point offers a rare perspective: the ability to see how the same brand codes behave differently depending on history, maturity and social structure.

What becomes immediately clear is that there is no single, transferable luxury playbook. Strategies that resonate in Paris or Milan can misfire when applied uncritically in Johannesburg or Lagos. Equally, expressions that carry deep cultural resonance in African markets are often misunderstood when judged through a European lens.

The most enduring luxury brands we encounter are those that understand why consumers signal status, not just how they do it. They resist imposing taste hierarchies. They listen before translating. And they recognise that luxury's role is not to educate markets into conformity, but to express aspiration in ways that feel locally authentic and globally coherent.

What This Means for Brands and for Those Who Build Them

For global luxury brands, the implication is clear. Cultural fluency is no longer optional. African markets cannot be approached as extensions of European ones, nor can visible expression be dismissed as a transitional phase on the way to maturity.

The brands that will define the next era of luxury growth are those willing to hold multiple truths at once: that discretion and expression are not opposites but responses, that taste is shaped by history as much as preference; and that luxury, at its best, adapts without losing its essence.

From a position inside luxury ecosystems across Europe, the Americas and Africa, one thing is certain. The future of luxury will not be defined by a single aesthetic or behavioural code. It will be defined by those who understand context deeply enough to let luxury speak differently without losing its soul.

The Real Insight

The difference between European and African consumer behaviour is not about loud versus quiet. It is about what success must prove in different parts of the world.

In places where status is secure, it can afford to whisper.

In places where it has been historically denied, it often needs to speak.

Neither is superior. Both are rational. And both deserve to be understood on their own terms.

For more information, visit www.leagasdelaney.co.za. You can also follow Leagas Delaney South Africa on LinkedIn or on Instagram. 

*Image courtesy of contributor