Along with the draw of a major Native American art events, a slew of new restaurant and store openings make Santa Fe a top contender for that last-minute escape.

Every August, international aesthetes descend upon Santa Fe, New Mexico for the famed SWAIA Indian Market. This weekend, spread out around a central leafy plaza, the market plays host to a world-class roster of Native American artists: Aric Chopito's traditional Zuni Pueblo textiles, including a fringed rain sash; Russell Sanchez’s earthy San Ildefonso pottery; Shan Gorshan’s double-woven Cherokee baskets; and Sonwai's chunky 18-karat gold and silver jewelry pieces, which are also on display at the oh-so-perfectly curated Shiprock Gallery, to name a few. While the seasonal market will draw huge crowds, the city is worth exploring beyond the main plaza, offering a slew of new openings to keep you inspired, well-fed, and well-rested.

Fittingly, this weekend, ZOHI, a new contemporary Native-American-owned space is opening as well. “We wanted to bring a resurgence of Natives selling their own art,” says its founder, Zoe Urness, an Alaskan Tlilngit and Cherokee photographer perhaps best known for her image of a U.S. military veteran at Standing Rock, wearing a gas mask and clutching an American flag. Along with her Navajo partner, Lehi Thunder Voice Eagle, her space will be showcasing work by the filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, who has created a virtual reality piece based on the Standing Rock experience; works by Steven Paul Judd, Santiago X, and Gregg Deal; and Jacque Fragua’s politically charged street art.

And then there’s the fashion. Last month, cult Japanese label Visvim moved into a light-flooded Victorian house, where it combines a Zen aesthetic with a deep homage to Native cultures. From designer Hiroki Nakamura, the brand’s first womenswear outpost features high-rise leather moccasins alongside Japanese furniture and antique pottery. For Western ware, the beloved Santa Fe Vintage has an adobe home on East Palace Avenue with reworked indigo Mali cloth, cowboy boots, vintage denim, and turquoise jewelry.

Collecting all those beautiful crafts and fashion can work up an appetite—luckily, new bars and restaurants have you covered. The unfussy Mexican spot Paloma offers bone marrow tacos, grilled whole sea bass and mezcal-based cocktails, while the locally loved French café Clafoutis’s new storefront features airy croissant sandwiches and niçoise salads with white anchovies. For something sweet, drop by Dolina for dreamy slices of banana cream pie, Eastern European baked goods, and a fortifying espresso. Healthy açaí bowls, turmeric juice shots, and biodynamic seeds are on tap at the bright white-on-white Modern General—so are garden tools, cotton baskets, and ceramic mixing bowls. Just behind it, the cheery, salad-focused Vinaigrette serves peach burrata, kale Caesars and summery rosés.

After all the hustle, wind down at the Four Seasons Rancho Encantado’s new partnership with EQUUS, which uses horses for well-being and therapy sessions. Wellness is nothing new in Santa Fe, but harnessing the power of the herd and horses in an open paddock helps guests gain insight into their own personalities—in the season of the eclipse, even the most ardent new-age cynics could become believers.

The Luxe Life: Tips for Making Your Mark As a Luxury Brand

Cracking the luxury market can be an intimidating step for new brands. Gloria Gammo has some tips for taking your brands to new heights in luxury.

The word ‘luxury’ comes complete with its own (Louis Vuitton-monogrammed) suite of connotations – from the covetable to the downright unattainable, luxury brands exist in a different echelon, and for many businesses, cracking the luxury market seems far out of reach.

While it takes on different forms for different people, there are common characteristics. Regardless of whether your brand provides a service, an experience, or a product, to really embody ‘luxury’ you must incorporate the winning trifecta of personalisation, exclusivity, and value recognition into everything that you do.

So where do you start? It’s all about knowing your market.

Do your research

Dive deep to identify your target consumer segment. Before we started My Proposal Co we had both spent more than 10 years working for luxury brands in travel and event management. We knew exactly how our customers liked to be treated, and what high notes to hit to ensure the experience wasn’t just enjoyable, but luxurious.

Working in your chosen industry for other luxury businesses helps give you an insight into where your luxury brand could carve out its niche. But it’s not enough just to identify your
market – when setting out to launch a luxury brand, it’s important to do your groundwork on why consumers are drawn to luxury in the first place.

Perceived luxury

A recent study identified four dimensions to the perception of luxury:

• financial (the value of the product expressed in dollars),
• functional (the quality, uniqueness and reliability of the product),
• individual (the customer’s personal orientation on consumption), and
• social (the idea of conspicuousness and prestige value to affect social standing).

To some consumers, social dimensions such as the popularity or exclusivity of the luxury brand might be the most important, signalling wealth and status among their peer groups. To others, luxury goods might serve as a financial investment and must meet their standards of superior quality. To others, luxury brand consumption might stem from hedonistic or materialistic motives that express their individual self.

What does this mean for you? To start, luxury brands should encompass their consumer’s values to justify a purchase. Understanding these value dimensions in the context of your own customers is key to implementing appropriate marketing strategies.

Once you’ve identified and understood your market segment, it’s time to implement your brand strategy and promotion techniques. These need to be clear and consistent from the outset, so your brand maintains its integrity and appeal.

Revel in the ritual

With the growing trend towards experiential luxury over pure product luxury, it’s key to create luxurious rituals around the consumption of your product, allowing customers to really experience your brand.

One example is Porsche, which innovated its delivery process by allowing customers to pick up their new car right off the assembly line in Germany – it’s personalised, exclusive, and tailored to appeal to the desires and interests of luxury vehicle consumers.

Inject some mystery

Prestige brands differ from mass brands in that they won’t compare themselves with competitors – rather they aim to elevate their own brand by communicating stories (often laced with mystery) to give the brand an air of myth. Think the enigmatic persona of Coco Chanel, still leveraged in Chanel’s marketing to this day. Create your own myths and legends, and use these in every touch point – from your products, to brick-and-mortar (or online) stores, to your marketing.

Maintain control

In a world where outsourcing and automation are words du jour, luxury brands do it differently. Luxury is about the personal, and quality control is paramount. It’s also crucial to have full control of distribution or delivery of your product or service: this is where the one-on-one service comes in.

Tania and I are on-hand for our clients 24/7 from day one, throughout the proposal planning, and on the actual day. Providing this support is all part of delivering a seamless experience.

Don’t advertise, communicate

Luxury brands communicate a story to build a dream, providing a covetable lifestyle that consumers wish to recreate. This communication can’t be measured by short-term sales increases – it’s a long game. It’s why we don’t do any outbound marketing at My Proposal Co. Instead, we focus on communicating the brand’s story, and our customers come to us.

Scrap the price tag

Brands need to understand that for clients, price is not the motivating factor. Instead, it’s about the four value dimensions mentioned above. When we set up our business we didn’t want price to be a factor – we don’t put prices on our website and there are no set packages or standard items on offer because we provide a tailored service.

Treasure the one-on-one

Treat every client as a VIP, develop direct, one-on-one relationships with your clients. For us, forging a genuine connection with our clients is crucial because it allows us to tailor their proposals to their personality. The real luxury isn’t in the diamonds and caviar, it’s being able to deliver a creative, one-of- a-kind experience. It’s all about nailing those luxurious details for a personalised, lavish experience.

5 Tips To Squeezing Health Into A Busy Work Schedule

The adoption of a fast-paced lifestyle has increased the number of lifestyle-related ailments like chronic neck and back pain, diabetes, obesity, Vitamin D deficiency, and others. The situation is amplified with the increase in pollution, toxins, and even stress in our surrounding environment.

Hence, it is important we start making the right choices and taking care of our health, by adopting a balanced lifestyle.

For those of us who have a desk job and work for more than eight hours at a stretch staying healthy can get challenging.

Some of the common challenges we could be facing include:

• Working until late, leading to unhealthy eating choices, like fried snacks, chips, instant noodles etc.
• Lack of exercise, leading to fatigue at work.
• Lack of time to pack lunch boxes.
• And often, not getting the time to plan or think about our health and food.
• So here is a plan on how you can help fight the above challenges and work towards leading a healthy lifestyle.

Keep a safety box of (healthy) food

A lot of times, our meal times could go way off from routine, because of meetings or travel. We might not have time to get a good dose of nutritious food at those times.

Here is where you create a ‘safety box’ which has an assortment of healthy food and keep it on your desk or wherever is the place that you are trapped most of your working hours.

This box would contain healthy food options like

Energy bars, dry nuts, bowl of fresh fruits etc. The key is food on-the-go, which you can simply grab and eat.

Plan and prep meals for the week

To avoid the temptation of takeout food, we suggest you use the days that you are off to plan and prep meals for the entire week. Keep some sauce ready, chop up some vegetables and greens, and keep some cooked whole grains handy – pack them up in different combos in the fridge and have your own customised salad bar throughout the week. Or whip up an easy fresh fruit, oats and yogurt parfait for a quick breakfast jar.

Cut back on caffeine

A common drink to get that instant boost of energy is coffee. Instant coffees or even sodas will provide the much-needed relief but they will backfire on your health in the long run.

You probably cannot completely do without coffee, especially after a long meeting, but avoid drinking caffeinated drinks few hours before you are about retire for the night and sleep. Instead, opt for a glass of warm milk along with dry fruits or even a glass of turmeric milk.

This allows the body to recover and flush out the toxins especially since caffeine stays in the body for at least three-five hours. You can always switch to green tea or even healthier options like fresh fruit juices.

Incorporate exercise as and when you can

While there are some organisations that have office gyms and yoga studios on their premises, most people don’t get the time to take advantage of such benefits. That doesn’t mean that you cannot exercise. Skip the traditional and opt for innovative exercises that you can include in your daily schedule. Cycle or walk to your work, use the stairs, skip your social media and take a walk for 30 minutes to connect with someone after lunch, or take your meetings and one-on-ones as a walk down the road.

And then, of course, there are the basic ones like stretching, leg circles, chair squats and knee lifts and much more that you can practice when you are sitting on your chair.

Get a healthy dose of realism

Even with the best of intentions, sometimes our body is too tired from hectic work schedules that it simply refuses exertion of any kind. The mind, too, gets affected and the result is sadness, and a constant feeling of fatigue.

What is important is to realise the truth. If unconventional work schedules don’t let you exercise, just be truthful to yourself. Instead of going to a full-fledged gym and eventually letting go of your membership midway, do something that you love. Take your dog for a walk. Go for evening walks with a friend. Play with your children. Try something new and you will feel rejuvenated and refreshed.

Working long and maintaining a healthy life is not easy, but it is not impossible. However, you might have to squeeze in some healthy habits to live healthier and stress-free. Try these simple steps first and don’t forget to smile.