When Mrs. Prada took the helm, she injected it with new life, taking nylon, an everyday material used for athleticwear, and elevating it to a material used in handbags and backpacks, elevating it into a medium suitable for luxury accessories. A decade later came the launch of Prada’s ready-to-wear collection, and her future was evident; Prada would become one of fashion’s top designers, and the house would be one of the most sought-after Italian luxury labels.

That wasn’t enough for Mrs. Prada; she would go on to transform Prada from just a fashion label into a global lifestyle behemoth. In 1993 she took her love of art and launched Fondazione Prada, a museum in Milan that saw a new tower designed by Rem Koolhaas in 2018 and Bar Luce, a whimsical café designed by famed auteur Wes Anderson. The brand hosted Prada Frames, a series of symposiums on topics like sustainability and materiality with a mix of academics, experts, students, and panels. There’s also Prada Mode, a roving private, members-only pop-up club held during the likes of Frieze Seoul, Art Basel in Miami Beach, and Art Basel in Hong Kong. Prada even expanded into Web3, with an NFT Time capsule collection.

What better way to embody a lifestyle than through design? Danish design company Vipp started out in 1939, when Holger Nielsen used a metal press to design a pedal-controlled bin that would become standard in dentist and doctor’s offices. After he passed away, his daughter saw its potential and elevated it from a utilitarian item to a utilitarian design item by selling it to high-end design stores and showing it at design fairs. From there, Vipp expanded its simple, clean aesthetic into furniture, and then into kitchen. In addition, the company holds regular supper clubs, publishes books, and has opened a number of guesthouses in Spain, Italy, and Denmark that people can book and stay in to experience a Vipp-decorated home. For Sofie Christensen Egelund, Nielsen’s granddaughter, the Vipp lifestyle — which is about quality craftsmanship, minimalism, clean aesthetics, a breadth of culture, a sense of wanderlust, and of course, food — is very much about the family’s personal passions. “Being family owned, you sometimes do things that you are very passionate about,” said Chrstiensen Egelund. “So for example, turning old buildings to something that's very interesting. Both my mom and my brother and I are very passionate about old buildings, architecture, design, food, art — this whole universe.”

Nike started out in 1971 by University of Oregon track athlete Phil Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman with a running shoe called the Waffle Trainer. It has since evolved into a global behemoth that prides itself on the idea that anybody who has a body can be an athlete. In recent years the brand has been scaling its Nike Women division with a series of products, apps, events, and more that celebrates a holistic approach to health that includes Nike Well Collective stores. “We've been innovating around nutrition, sleep, rest recovery for our elite athletes for 50 years, we haven't taken all of those holistic facets, really to the consumer externally,” said Liz Weldon, VP, Global Nike Women's Brand Management. And that's what we felt we had an opportunity to do so that people could be like, Okay, there is a trusted source. They've been in this for 50 years, they're connected with the best scientists and experts in the industry. And there's one place you can go.”

Lifestyle can go from something lowbrow, like health to highbrow art. Hauser & Wirth, the blue-chip gallery founded by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth and Ursula Hauser in Zurich in 1991, is growing into a full-fledged lifestyle company that does more than sell art by the likes of Amy Sherald, Nicolas Party, Jenny Holzer, Mark Bradford, and Louis Bourgeois to collectors; it encompasses the entire lifestyle of the collector. Along with locations in New York, London, Hong Kong, Zurich and Los Angeles, it also has Manuela, a restaurant its Los Angeles compound, a five-star hotel in the Scottish Highlands called The Fife Arms, Durslade Farmhouse, a six-room guest house and adjacent Roth Bar & Grill in Somerset, England, and two establishments in London: the members-only Groucho Club in Soho, and The Audley, a Mayfair pub.