How lightness became the ultimate status symbol

Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Toronto, aided by artificial intelligence, developed the lightest and strongest nano-material yet – a carbon nano-lattice so featherweight it can rest on a soap bubble without bursting it – yet strong enough to support more than a million times its own mass.

As in science, so in luxury. The past year has seen a flurry of “world’s lightest” high-end launches: Lenovo’s sub-1kg AI laptop; Scott’s 5.9kg road bike; Helly Hansen’s Odin Everdown jacket; and On’s Cloudboom Strike running shoes, with uppers literally sprayed to measure using thermoplastics. To underscore the point, in 2024 Samsonite sent its lightest suitcase to date – the two-kilogram Proxis – into low gravity space. In the preceding years, we’ve seen the arrival of the world’s lightest road car (the McLaren Elva) and the world’s lightest chair – Oskar Zieta’s 1.7kg Ultraleggera.

But why the collective sprint towards weightlessness, when for so long luxury was – consciously or not – associated with heft? If the value of a timepiece was once measured in part by the bicep it helped build, why are watches by Richard Mille, or new carbon and glass fibre composite designs from IWC, Hermès, Tudor and Tag Heuer, now celebrated for their barely-there weight?

A scene from Jurassic Park captures the logic perfectly. When a boy discovers a pair of night-vision goggles under a car seat, a lawyer asks, “Are they heavy?” The boy replies yes. “Then they’re expensive,” the lawyer says. “Put them back.”

Indeed, classic psychological studies show just how deeply we associate weight with value. One found that if you reduce a container’s weight by 15%, consumers notice no difference; reduce it by 30%, and they’re unwilling to pay full price. Our perceived value of an object often correlates with its expected weight – and when that expectation is disrupted, our internal pricing system collapses.

Yet according to Nick Tidball, co-founder of Vollebak – a brand known for its use of high-tech, ultralight materials such as graphene and aerogel – the appetite for lightness is the natural result of a more mobile, fast-moving society.

“It’s helped us realise that lightness is a good thing,” he says. “It doesn’t mean a lack of durability, for example. It can be applied to other nice things in our lives, like clothing. A coat doesn’t have to be thick and heavy to be warm or waterproof. Luxury generally is becoming lighter – look at architecture, or even cooking. Michelin-starred food used to mean big chunks of meat in rich sauces. Now there’s a lightness of touch.”

It’s a shift echoed in materials preferences, too. While Aston Martin still offers wood fascias for its cars, more than 90 per cent of customers now choose carbon fibre instead – partly for aesthetics, partly because it signals modernity, says chief creative officer Marek Reichman.

“Customers are increasingly getting the message about these once-rare materials,” he says. “They see them in aviation, in Formula One, and now maybe in their skis, their pen or watch. They’re part of their everyday changing world. It’s performance as luxury.”

Still, old habits persist. Though manufacturers are gradually replacing iron ore–based materials with lighter, stronger alternatives – magnesium, titanium, polymers and ceramic composites – many consumers remain attached to traditional notions of luxury. Case in point – most Aston Martin buyers still opt for leather upholstery over lighter weight Alcantara. “They decide they can live with the few extra kilograms for the perceived luxury and sensory appeal of leather,” says Reichman.

So does the shift towards lightness signal the end of the traditionally heavyweight? Does the sturdy, bench-made brogue have a future in a world where, as shoemakers Giuseppe Santoni demonstrated last year, proper dress shoes can weigh only 295 grams?

Tidball doesn’t think the two are mutually exclusive. He recently purchased a Ligne Roset modular sofa, he says, precisely because it was lightweight and mobile – “even if it cost as much as a Chesterfield”. But he believes there’s space for both – “a super lightweight trainer next to those brogues, to be worn depending on the occasion”.

Benoit Mintiens, the product designer behind train carriages, pushchairs and the Ressence watch brand, speaks from experience when he concedes that, after generations of heavyweight materials the likes of marble and oak being conflated with ideas of lasting quality that association is not an easy one for many consumers to shake. It’s why super-yacht designers have had to find ways to create millimetre thick sheets of marble for their clients’ preferred interior designs.

He recently launched Ressence’s Type 7, a super light model with a full titanium dial and bracelet, and has already grown used to “people coming up to me and asking if there’s anything in it,” he laughs. “It’s a deeply human question. But if the watch was heavy, like a Rolex, that’s a question that wouldn’t occur to them”.

Still, he argues, lightness must prevail – because the real driver isn’t aesthetics, but sustainability. Using less material, he notes, means more efficient production and less energy required to transport goods.

“We’re all getting more sensitive to ecological pressures,” Mintiens says. “And weight, by definition, means more material – and more material means more resources. Logically, we’d make any product lighter, providing it doesn’t hamper its function. Why do we still make heavier things? Not because they’re more luxurious or higher quality, but because it’s easier. Weight is a cheap way to suggest quality. It means not having to think of design solutions that give the same strength with less material. The reassurance of weight, the idea that there’s some sense of honesty in it – that’s an old way of thinking. And it’s one we need to lose.”