As I approach 50, I’ve started watching people age differently. Some people I once admired grow more compelling with time. Others seem trapped in a visible battle to look younger. It raises a personal question: how do I want to grow old? In Japan, it is hardly a personal question. Nearly 30% of Japanese are already 65 or older, and by 2037, one in three will be.

Luxury, strangely, may already know the answer.

In Japan, vintage Submariners are increasingly prized. Mercedes W123s have found new admirers. Tom Ford-era Gucci is being rediscovered, while a 1990s Maison Margiela jacket sits behind glass in a Tokyo archive store. Yesterday’s old is today’s collectible.

Even inconvenience has become desirable. Mechanical watches, vinyl and old cars ask more of us than their modern equivalents. Yet people willingly pay a premium for the friction.

Luxury has spent centuries teaching us that time creates value: patina, provenance, character, rarity. Just not, apparently, when it comes to ourselves.

Beauty is changing. Some brands still promise to erase time. Others talk about “age positivity” or “ageing gracefully”. But neither has found a truly seductive answer. One fights ageing; the other asks us to accept it.

Perhaps the next opportunity is not age acceptance, but age aspiration. For now, let’s call it agecraft: not fighting time, nor simply accepting it, but learning to become better with it. More confident. More individual. More distinctly ourselves.

The opportunity is not simply better representation of older people, but a better representation of ageing itself. For brands, that means making ageing aspirational: not younger, not “good for your age”, but more distinctive and desirable with time.

We admire the patina on a vintage Submariner. Great archive fashion doesn’t become desirable by pretending to be new. It becomes more valuable by becoming more itself. Perhaps we should aspire to do the same.

Rui Nago
Chief Strategy Officer
VML & Ogilvy Japan