The Feminine Renaissance: How Women Are Rewriting the Language of Luxury – An Interview with Alba De Simone

Alba De Simone, author of Money Can’t Buy: The New Frontier of Luxury.

Luxury, once defined by grandeur, is entering its own Renaissance. A rebirth of meaning, emotion, and consciousness. And just as the first Renaissance was born in Italy, so too does this new awakening rise from the same soil. It is embodied by Alba De Simone, the Italian-born, New York–based strategist who blends philosophy with analytics and intuition with precision.

Educated in Philosophy, International Studies, and Economics between Venice and London, and later trained in Luxury Management in Milan, Alba today leads Client Relations for Versace North America, where she turns numbers into narratives; using data as a starting point to create a mathematics of meaning that transforms strategy into emotion, and emotion into experience.

Her work embodies what she calls the Feminine Renaissance of the luxury environment, a return to sensitivity, soul, and beauty with purpose in the world of modern prestige.

We sat down with Alba to talk about the new feminine codes transforming the world of luxury.

Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam (HBZVN): Alba, you often speak of a “Feminine Renaissance” in luxury. What does that mean to you?

ALBA DE SIMONE: Born in Italy, in Florence in the early 1400s, the Renaissance was far more than an artistic era. It was a rebirth of the human spirit, a moment when beauty, science, and emotion began to coexist again.

When I speak of a Feminine Renaissance in luxury, I refer to a similar awakening; not about gender, but about energy. The feminine represents awareness, grace, and emotional intelligence – qualities that should define today’s luxury environment.

For centuries, luxury spoke the language of power and possession. Today, it’s rediscovering its artistic core. A revival of empathy, intuition, and care.

HBZVN: How does this rebirth translate into your daily work?

ALBA DE SIMONE: The paradigm has shifted. The boutique is no longer the end of the journey, but the beginning of a relationship. Luxury is not measured by sales, but by how deeply someone feels they belong to a Maison’s universe, how personally they feel recognized.

Every gesture matters: a word, a tone, a detail remembered. The real artistry lies in creating moments that make people feel seen, not just served. When care becomes culture and empathy becomes strategy, luxury transcends commerce and becomes connection. Because true luxury isn’t about adding more. It’s about making everything mean more.

HBZVN: You were born in Italy and now shape narratives in New York – two worlds that have defined art and ambition. How do they coexist in you?

ALBA DE SIMONE: I was born in Italy, a country that taught me devotion to detail, that Renaissance instinct where beauty and truth must coexist. It’s a culture of craftsmanship and consciousness, where even the smallest gesture is an act of meaning.

New York, instead, taught me reinvention, that creativity needs velocity, that vision means nothing without execution. Here, I learned to transform intuition into action and emotion into movement; the ability to think globally and make complexity feel effortless.

But between these two poles, Paris and London also shaped who I am. Paris taught me that luxury is belonging: The birthplace of the maison culture, where refinement is not an aesthetic but a state of being. London expanded my perspective: multicultural, analytical, and fearless. A city that merges creativity with discipline and always looks ahead. Together, these cities became my roots, my sanctuary, where I return to draw inspiration and to give back what I’ve discovered.

They taught me that luxury, like life, thrives in contrast: between stillness and ambition, tradition and innovation, art and logic. I like to say: I was born Italian, refined European, and shaped American.

HBZVN: How does the philosophy of the Luxury Renaissance translate strategically?

ALBA DE SIMONE: In this new Luxury Renaissance, numbers remain central; but their purpose has evolved. They no longer measure only performance; they measure perception, emotion, and connection.

I see data as the architecture of meaning. Each metric, from retention to engagement, becomes a signal of human behavior, a modern form of empathy translated into numbers.

Strategy begins with analysis, but it must end with emotion. Because in luxury, precision without poetry is empty, and emotion without structure is fleeting. The final strategy is human: using intelligence to serve intuition, and technology to deepen trust. It’s where data becomes dialogue; and business becomes belonging.

HBZVN: You speak often of feminine leadership. How do you define it in this new age of luxury?

ALBA DE SIMONE: I call it feminine because it restores what the world of leadership – and often the world of luxury – had forgotten: softness, intuition, and coherence. The feminine is not about gender. It’s about energy, the ability to sense, to connect, and to create harmony where there was hierarchy.

This kind of leadership listens before it acts. It doesn’t impose direction; it builds alignment. It values empathy as much as execution, and beauty as much as strategy.

It’s the same energy that once guided the great Renaissance minds. They didn’t build to dominate, but to inspire. That, to me, is the essence of feminine leadership: strength with grace, ambition with soul, and power that feels human.

HBZVN: Your upcoming book Money Can’t Buy: The New Frontier of Luxury explores the future of luxury. How does it connect to this Renaissance?

ALBA DE SIMONE: “Luxury is not what we possess, but what we live, believe, and belong to.” Money Can’t Buy: The New Frontier of Luxury is the written expression of this Renaissance; a cultural and emotional rebirth that places meaning back at the center of desire. I understood early on that luxury was never about excess. It was about essence. Not display, but meaning.

A boutique is never just a store. It is a stage where culture comes alive. A client appointment is never merely a transaction. It is an initiation into belonging, a shared language of beauty, trust, and recognition. Luxury is consciousness made visible, a quiet rebirth of beauty that begins in the heart before it ever reaches the hand. It’s the silent poetry behind precision, the human pulse beneath perfection.

The future belongs to maisons that can be global yet intimate, innovative yet faithful, visible yet discreet. In that delicate balance, luxury transcends business.
It becomes belonging; and belonging, carefully curated, is the one thing that money will never be able to buy.

Model: Alba De Simone @albadesimone3
Photographer: Juan Esteban Ayerbe Ortiz @juanes_ayerbe

Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam