That's perfect, I'm stealing it!

Aspirational brands

Possibly, but the average person is wrong about a lot of things, especially those they aren't familiar with. The average person is no more an authority on luxury than they are on, to reuse your example, the logistics of running a farm. It's probably also important to draw a distinction between parvenu countries like the USA and China, where "pop luxury" item are considered luxury, and old money countries like France or Switzerland where that's much less the case.

It is really hard. IME the tactic with the highest success rate is buying older luxury goods - something from the 70s or earlier. Obviously this doesn't work for clothing, but for things like furniture it's great, or even houses themselves; high-end homes built before the 90s are enormously higher quality than modern "luxury" houses made of OSB and gray-painted cardboard. Clothing is much more difficult, especially outside of Europe, where they still have companies making things with care using high-quality fabric.

I guess the crux of the issue is that luxury used to mean quality, not ostentation. A Mercedes from the 70s doesn't "seem" luxurious to the modern eye until you start interacting with the switchgear or opening and closing doors. Same thing for the sofa framed with real wood and metal springs and upholstered in outstanding fabric - you can't tell why it's better than IKEA by looking at a photo.