Wow!

It's quite a time in Luxury. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

There is a lot to talk about

Wintour blew it. Saks went bankrupt. Lululemon needs rescuing. Quince is coming. Used is cool. And Ralph Lauren may be the sanest guy left in the room.

Fashion and luxury are having one hell of a moment. Unfortunately, much of it resembles a very expensive cocktail party where half the guests are drunk, nobody knows who's paying the bill, and Anna Wintour is still shuffling place cards.

Let's begin with the Met.

Major Markdown

The decision to build the 2027 Costume Institute exhibition around John Galliano was both breathtakingly arrogant and spectacularly tone-deaf. Galliano is enormously talented. He also comes with baggage large enough to require its own Goyard luggage cart. The backlash came, the idea disappeared, and fashion suddenly discovered something the rest of us learned years ago: The Internet remembers everything. And maybe (we hope) the era when Anna Wintour could declare something fabulous and everyone obediently applauded is ending.

Une Famille

Then there's the Arnault family and LVMH. Bernard Arnault insists reports of family infighting over succession are nonsense. Fine. But he's 77, all five children are inside the empire, and the luxury world's favorite new parlor game is Succession: Paris Edition. Meanwhile, LVMH's market value remains dramatically below its 2023 peak. Perhaps the problem isn't who's eventually getting Dad's office. Perhaps it's that luxury spent years raising prices because it could, and finally discovered that even rich people know when they're paying too much.

Bain estimates luxury has lost roughly 60 million aspirational consumers, while prices on luxury goods have risen dramatically since 2019. Turns out there may actually be a limit to what people will pay for a handbag.

Then we have Lululemon, which somehow took one of the hottest brands in America and made it feel tired. Same leggings. Questionable colors. Premium prices. Slowing sales.

The rescue plan? Bring in longtime Nike executive Heidi O'Neill. Excellent idea? Nothing says “fresh start” quite like hiring an executive from another athletic company that's spent years trying to find its own mojo.

Across town, Saks has become an even better comedy. Saks Global (the Frankenstein marriage of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman) went bankrupt and emerged under the inspiring new name Exemplar Luxury Group. ???

Bloomingdale's, meanwhile, has been doing something positively radical: improving stores, reducing promotions and giving customers a reason to come inside. Sales recently jumped 10.2%. Imagine that. Retailing. At a retailer. What a concept.

And coming up fast is Quince. Quince has essentially looked at the luxury business and asked: What if we sold cashmere, leather, linen and silk without charging the customer for a marble flagship, celebrity ambassador and 74-person marketing department?

That's a dangerous question. Especially because resale has simultaneously gone completely mainstream. A ten-year-old Rolex isn't “used”, it's discontinued. A vintage Chanel jacket isn't secondhand, it's archival. And increasingly, shoppers would rather hunt down something interesting from 2014 than buy something boring from 2026.

Then there's New York Fashion Week, where emerging designers can still spend six figures staging a 12-minute show so influencers can stare at their phones while pretending to watch it.

NYFW isn't necessarily fashion anymore. It's content creation with expensive lighting.

Which brings us to Ralph Lauren. Ralph shows his Spring 2027 collection on September 9, just before the official NYFW calendar begins. Can he pull off another knockout? I wouldn't bet against him. Ralph Lauren simply wears his DNA. Beautiful cars. Beautiful homes. Polo fields. Western wear. Tuxedos. Cable-knit sweaters. America. He's been selling the same fantasy for 50 years, and remarkably, we still want in.

Patek Point

Meanwhile, watches have practically taken over the U.S. Open. Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Richard Mille, Gerald Charles, Jacob & Co. have made watch spotting a secondary sport. Tennis players now require three things: a racket, a 130-mph serve and a $200,000 wrist.

Bentley On Sale

And have you noticed what's happening with cars? Suddenly there are subsidized interest rates, lease incentives and 0% financing offers popping up across the market. Translation: inventory isn't moving quickly enough. Luxury automobile manufacturers spent several years telling us there were no discounts, no inventory and we'd be lucky to get a car. Bentley offering $4999.00 leases deals, Aston Martin offering a coupe at $2975.00 a month. Mercedes begging you to lease one of their leftover electric mistakes. Funny how quickly “take it or leave it” becomes “how much would you like off?”

Consumers aren't broke, they're pissed. They're questioning $4,000 handbags, $1,200 sneakers, $150 leggings, endless luxury price increases and department stores that somehow forgot the department-store part.

But consumers want something in return: quality, originality, service, value, or at least a little magic. That's why Ralph Lauren still works.

And maybe it's why so many others suddenly don't.