Fancy an after-hours shopping spree in Harrods, a trip to the edge of the atmosphere, or a set by Rihanna at your party? Such things can be organised at the drop of a hat by luxury concierge services, the fixers for the uber-rich.
These elite services act as lifestyle managers aimed at satisfying the whims of the 0.1 per cent and helping to organise their lives. "As long as it's legal, we'll make it happen," says Hannah Westaway, managing director of London-based Knightsbridge Circle.
The company's daily undertakings range from the extraordinary — they have organised private concerts with Andrea Bocelli, one-on-one meetings with the Pope and sourced one-of-a-kind Cartier jewellery - to the absurd: clients who go on holiday to a busy hotel can opt to have a personal deck chair minder, whose sole role is to bag them a prime sun lounger first thing each morning.
It can be challenging to concoct exciting activities for someone who has everything. "These are people that have a certain lifestyle and they're exposed to many things, so we're constantly thinking outside the box for new and unique experiences," says Westaway.
For those inclined towards grand gestures, they've organised whirlwind first dates which require a passport and have planned a year of experiences for landmark birthdays.
"We have a very varied roster of members, but I wouldn't say that they're flashy, says Westaway. They tend to be worth upwards of £100 million, "but we don't target it in that way."
The service doesn't come cheap - an annual membership to Knightsbridge Circle starts at £40,000. In return, members are promised holistic support: access to the best doctors, drivers, wellness practitioners and stylists.
Luxury concierge services also specialise in snagging tables at in-demand restaurants. In London, that means places like Dorian, The Dover and Endo at the Rotunda, an omakase restaurant that is seemingly always fully booked.
While most tend to gravitate towards Mayfair and Notting Hill, Simon Blackford of Ellidore likes to expand his members' horizons.
"I'm always trying to get our clients to go to east London to try different restaurants," he says. Recently he took one to Brat, which was broadly a success, "though I'm not sure the drive back from Shoreditch helped".
A gung-ho attitude is required to work in the concierge world. "We always say that we're two phone calls away from sourcing anything anywhere in the world," says Blackford. The Ellidore team are game for everything: not long ago, they were asked to find a missing pet iguana for a client in LA.
They sounded out a pet detective and were fully prepared to launch a citywide lizard hunt, but bathos won out: Blackford says the iguana was found in the client's house: "I think it was in their cupboard."
Many ultra-high net worth individuals are drawn to concierge services for their promise to pull back the velvet rope.
Clients are often keen to join exclusive private members' clubs with years-long waiting lists, such as Annabel's and 5 Hertford Street. Can a hush-hush queue skip be facilitated? "We are definitely able to help with the access of those things," Westaway says.
Knightsbridge Circle members did some slightly less glam queue skipping during the pandemic, when the UK was in the second lockdown and vaccines were only available to the elderly and vulnerable.
The company offered its members "luxury vaccine package holidays" where they could be flown to Dubai to get the Covid jab.
One of the first and best known luxury concierge services is Quintessentially, co-founded in 2000 by the Queen's nephew, Ben Elliot.
The company blazed the trail for years, but reported a £2.1 million loss for the year to April 2024 (according to Quintessentially bosses, this is because of "significant" investments in the business).
While Quintessentially has membership tiers which range from £5,000 a year to more than £150,000, other services are focused on exclusively ultra-high net worth individuals.
Take S2, which bills itself as "a luxury concierge service that believes in the power of a life without limits".
"We really wanted the crème de la crème, we wanted to have the top tier people," say founders Ali Samli and Goran Svilar. A single membership to S2 costs £60,000 for the year plus VAT, while a family membership is £120,000.
How do they justify the price? "We're not just service providers, we're confidants," says Samli. They are involved in everything, from births and weddings to holidays and education.
Svilar and Samli met in London 20 years ago and became close friends. "We are very social and always out and about, and people knew us for good lifestyle and good style," says Svilar.
The pair became known as "the boys" and often helped friends and acquaintances get into exclusive spots in Mayfair. They decided to turn this favour-pulling into a business, and now have 25 households and three corporate clients on their books. They describe themselves as like "a very good PA but with the lifestyle".
"What an assistant doesn't have is all the inside contacts," explains Samli. "If you want the best school adviser to put your children in Harvard University, your PA will not necessarily know that."
The pair live by the mantra that "con-nections are everything" and are confident about the strings they can pull. How about invites to properly exclusive events, like the recent Vanity Fair Oscars after-party in LA? "Yes, we can make it happen," says Samli simply. He is more cryptic when I ask how: "It's like the recipe of a dessert that you're asking me right now."
Like Knightsbridge Circle, S2 insists that it isn't about the money, and not just any old billionaire can become a member. In fact, Svilar and Samli are rather discerning and vet all of their applicants in person.
"It's more about the manners, whether you're respectful, whether we can anticipate problems," says Svilar. Since September, they have turned down two prospective clients. "It's almost like you're on a date, you can see whether it's a red flag or not."
As well as the eye-watering membership fees, there are other costs to consider. An Oxfam report in 2023 found that the richest one per cent account for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66 per cent, while the carbon footprint of the 0.1 per cent is 77 times higher per person than the upper level for global warming to peak at 1.5C.
One of S2's more extravagant undertakings was flying a rare Birkin bag on a private jet from Dubai to Paris as a last-minute present for an anniversary dinner. Do they ever consider the toll on the planet over making anything possible?
Svilar says the private jet-setting Birkin was "a very special and time-specific case", and they always try to offer sustainable options. Not easy when requests are often to the tune of a superyacht with a helipad.
While the rest of us are thinking about how much a bottle of olive oil costs these days, the rich are getting richer. In the UK last year, the wealth of billionaires increased by a cool £35 million a day, making it a good time to be their fairy godmothers.
