Shoes For Your Brain & Luxury Wellness Travel
What do Loreal, Kering, Lanserhof and Nike have in common
Last year I was quoted in The Economist comparing a Chanel handbag to longevity.
Today? Longevity as luxury couldn’t be more accurate.
Earlier this month, my company In Search Of curated a health and longevity immersion for a heritage European brand. Hannah Bronfman did a great write-up on it here.
But here’s what’s been catching my attention lately.
Lake Garda in October, 2025
The Luxury Industry Is Finally Getting It
Kering just divested their beauty division to L’Oréal and officially announced a focus on wellness and longevity - with a 50/50 joint venture to explore business opportunities at the intersection of luxury, wellness and longevity. Two major brands going after something that seems obvious and yet still at its infancy phase aka a lot to figure out. I’m watching this one closely (as an insider, naturally).
The L’Oréal x Timeline Nutrition partnership from months ago didn’t get enough attention, but it’s incredibly relevant now. We’re finally arriving at the “skin is your largest organ and the truest sign of your health” understanding. You can eat for your skin. L’Oréal knew it for a while, but now they’ve made it official. Finally.
Fresh pomegranate, source of Urolithin A, key compounds produced and patented by Timeline Nutrition.
Wellness Travel Is Booming - But What Does It Actually Mean?
Lanserhof made the leap from family-owned to institutional backing with a recent €95M investment to expand beyond Germany and Austria - a signal that longevity travel and hospitality is getting serious capital attention
With 77% of travelers now citing wellness as a key reason to travel, the sector is growing. On one hand, you have what Equinox pioneered with Equinox Hotels in NYC in 2019: meticulous design focused on human performance, optimizing everything from sleep to fitness. But as gyms, saunas, and red light therapies become table stakes, it’ll take more to lead.
But there’s another concept of wellness that’s low-tech, almost anti-tech: nature, locality, and real farm-to-table. I’ve been thinking about this. Why does having produce served from a few steps away matter? Because you lose nutrients during transport. Studies show vitamin C losses can range from 15% in green peas to 77% in green beans after just seven days of storage, and fresh produce experiences measurable declines in vitamin C, β-carotene, and folate within five days of refrigeration. The new luxury won’t be global; it’ll be hyper-local. Belmond in Portofino reminded me of that (but more on that in another post)
Brain Health: Luxury’s Next Frontier
If travel and hospitality are where the capital is moving, brain health is where the innovation is accelerating. And it’s about time.
The stats are sobering: women are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s than breast cancer, two-thirds of Alzheimer’s patients are women, and women lose brain volume 30% faster than men during perimenopause. Yet until recently, brain health has been the most overlooked dimension of longevity.
That’s changing fast. In 2023, we piloted brain performance tracking with EEG scans at Equinox in California using WaveNeuro. This year, we brought that same approach to the event Hannah wrote about - partnering with Neurable to show guests how their brains changed in real-time after just 30 minutes of guided nervous system regulation work led by Dr. Tamsin Lewis. Watching someone see their own brain shift on a screen? That’s the kind of feedback loop that changes behavior.
Nike released NIKE MIND - probably their most advanced shoe ever, designed with actual brain impact studies informing the process. You can see the little nods throughout the design if you know what to look for. Atlas just emerged from stealth with $14M in funding to create a brain wearable. The tech is getting better, smaller, more accessible.
The Nike Mind Shoe
The Bottom Line
Here’s what I’m seeing: the luxury industry just woke up to what some of us have been saying for years. Longevity isn’t a trend - it’s the recalibration of what wealth actually buys. Not another handbag. Not another suite. Time. Clarity. Performance. A nervous system that isn’t fried. A brain that works.
The infrastructure is being built as we speak. The capital is moving. The experiences are being designed. And whether you’re tracking your brain with EEG headphones or eating tomatoes grown 50 feet from your table, the question is the same: are you optimizing for living well, or just living long?
Study Sources:
I can’t wait to see where this is going!