Warby Parker’s Neil Blumenthal articulates modern luxury thinking perfectly in this panel talk.

NEW YORK — “For me, omnichannel is just simple,” he said. It was a quick comment near the end of a 45-minute panel talk, but it was this exact portion of Neil Blumenthal’s fireside chat with STORY CEO Rachel Shechtman that unquestionably stuck out for us.

The whole talk is worth the watch if you can spare the time. If not, the biggest takeaway occurs during this short one minute aside. Fielding a question from the audience, Blumenthal strikes gold, waxing poetic about the luxury shift being spearheaded by online upstarts like his.

Neil’s basic argument is spot on: Today’s new wave of online-driven upstarts — in introducing a fundamentally consumer-focused luxury experience — has both reset the idea of what luxury means, and significantly reshaped the expectations of the modern consumer.

And here’s Neil explaining this in his own words (you’ll want to absorb this):

“It’s [thinking about] what is an easy, holistic experience? When luxury companies sell you an incredibly expensive handbag, and then you can’t return it to the same branded store either a couple blocks away or in another city, that is not a luxury experience. It’s just keeping in mind the entirety of the customer experience, and also knowing that where product on its own used to be sufficient, now it’s really about product, and service, and convenience. Ease is prioritized by consumers in a way that was never the case a generation ago.”

The big idea: Neil’s explanation of product versus package is right on the mark. It’s something we’ve been arguing over calls, texts, dinners, and emails with readers and friends for some time now. Properly assessing modern luxury requires a separation from judging it using the old codes of conglomerate-era luxury, which is generally defined by best-in-class product (which places the focus on the brand itself, not the consumer), poor service, and snobby inconvenience.

Modern luxury, on the other hand, is a package. The specialized product, the convenient delivery (and return process), the accessible language and branding, the strong quality-to-price ratio — all of this combined is what makes modern luxury a more compelling option for today’s savvy consumer than what old, traditional brands offer. When Blumenthal says the old way is “not a very luxurious experience”, you better believe that conviction courses through Warby’s veins.