Luxury Can't Be Taught In Class.(The Good Life)

Byline: Nick Foulkes

The dawning of the new academic year reminds me of my distrust of vocational education. Of course, there are exceptions: medicine, say, or the piloting of large aircraft. However, I believe that the line should be drawn long before one gets to luxury. Don't get me wrong; craftsmen should be skilled in their disciplines. But it is the pernicious cult of the M.B.A. and its increasing influence on the world of luxury that concerns me.

Luxury is not something you can pick up in a classroom. The appreciation of true luxury is a lifetime's work. I find the idea that one can be taught luxury -- and the thought that the world's great brands are going to be run by a bunch of spreadsheet jockeys -- really rather dispiriting. This sense of gloom was compounded by the death of British luxury-nightclub owner Mark Birley last month.

I was privileged to count Mark as a friend. More than 40 years ago he founded the world's grandest nightclub, Annabel's, in Berkeley Square, and every decade or so thereafter he opened another establishment in Mayfair: Mark's Club, Harry's Bar, the Bath & Racquets and George. Years may have passed since they opened, but the sense of his places as beautifully crafted environments into which the harsher realities of life dare not intrude remains. Yet to see him just as a club owner is to describe Enzo Ferrari as a carmaker.

Mark made the pursuit of ...