Justine Grosset: rethinking brand strategy for a changing luxury market
Portrait originally published in Forbes France – January 2026
Brand strategy consultant Justine Grosset is redefining the codes of luxury and art de vivre by aligning identity, narrative, and experience to guide international brands and creative agencies in their strategic decisions.
A career shaped by leading luxury maisons, now dedicated to brand strategy
A graduate of EM Lyon with a specialization in luxury marketing, Justine Grosset built her expertise within some of the most demanding maisons in the luxury industry. Between Paris, Shanghai, and Zurich, she worked with Chanel, The Kooples, IWC, and Chloé (Richemont Group), holding roles spanning product development, retail training, and client experience across fashion and high watchmaking. This immersion in international environments sharpened her understanding of excellence, desirability, and brand coherence — pillars of contemporary luxury.
After several years structuring retail and client experience strategies for global maisons, independence became the natural path to deepen this approach and apply this vision to more transversal projects. For the past seven years, Justine has been advising brands, entrepreneurs, creative studios, and agencies in France and internationally. Her approach blends strategic rigor, aesthetic culture, and editorial accuracy, grounded in a core belief: a brand is systemic. It is never a series of isolated actions, but a network of relationships that must be structured.
Based between Paris and Megève — with close proximity to Geneva and the Swiss luxury market — Justine operates across adjacent sectors that increasingly intersect: fashion, watchmaking, beauty, design, architecture, and hospitality. This cross-sector perspective feeds a nuanced vision of luxury where intention, culture, and experience prevail over surface aesthetics.
Justine Grosset leads the structuring of brand identities, the development of brand platforms, omnichannel strategy design, and the creation of distinctive narrative territories expressed in both French and English, designed for human audiences and agentic AI.
Strategic synergy: identity, narrative, and experience as drivers of differentiation
For Justine Grosset, a strong brand rests on an inseparable triad: a solid brand platform, embodied storytelling, and aligned client experience. The brand platform is the core matrix. It defines essence, codes, and narrative territory, creating internal coherence that enables teams — internal and external — to move in the same direction and make decisions within a shared framework.
Storytelling gives voice to that identity: lexicon, tone of voice, cultural references, rhythm. In both French and English, Justine emphasizes linguistic precision and editorial coherence. In an era of abundant, automated content, brand singularity lies in the ability to express emotion, perspective, and culture.
Client experience extends that narrative into digital and physical spaces — locations, services, digital journeys, retail environments, press, newsletters. Every touchpoint becomes a vector of identity. This holistic approach creates a virtuous circle where strategy, editorial expression, and operational excellence reinforce each other. Each brand is treated as a system in which identity, discourse, and experience are interdependent.
This methodology is synthesized in ÉCLORE, her proprietary framework for brand identity structuring. ÉCLORE enables entrepreneurs and internal teams to build a strong brand platform and deploy coherent marketing and communication strategies, regardless of project maturity or positioning. It applies the standards of luxury — depth, precision, and rigor — to strategic brand construction.
Deploying brands in an international, cultural, and post-AI world
Justine’s expertise is most visible in projects requiring vision, international coordination, and multichannel coherence.
She references the support of an artisanal couture maison for which she first trained teams through ÉCLORE, before developing a full omnichannel strategy integrating positioning, communication, press relations, packaging, and editorial deployment. The challenge was balancing a strong creative and cultural identity with a clear commercial strategy while preserving the brand’s artisanal soul.
Luxury today is also experiential and intangible. The growing importance of art de vivre and hospitality within luxury is reflected in her work as an external marketing director, where she aligns vision, narrative, and experience to ensure long-term coherence. She is currently involved in large-scale projects, including the strategic rebranding of a multidisciplinary hospitality complex in Switzerland combining hotel, dining, and cultural spaces. Her role is to design distinct brand platforms connected by a shared narrative thread and adapt concept, branding, and storytelling for a francophone audience while maintaining local relevance and international resonance.
Now fully operating at an international level, Justine Grosset advises executives and companies across Europe, the United States, Switzerland, Mexico, and Madagascar, applying the same standards of excellence instilled by the maisons that shaped her career. "The challenge is never to translate a narrative,” she explains, “but to adapt it culturally without betraying its identity. In the age of AI, rarity in luxury shifts toward intention, voice, and emotion : dimensions that cannot be automated.”
For emerging entrepreneurs and established brands alike, her advice is consistent: clarify positioning, align pricing with promise, and build strong foundations before amplifying communication. “A single idea — or a logo — is not enough. It’s identity territory, language, and client experience that allow a brand to exist sustainably.”
Source: Forbes France