The luxury fashion industry is roaring back everywhere but in Europe | Hacker News Reader

The luxury fashion industry is roaring back everywhere but in Europe

qz.com

38 pointscwwc46 comments

The luxury fashion industry seeing a bounce-back seems like just a small part of the larger clothing industry bouncing back; it feels as though all clothing and apparel shopping should rise again as more people go outside. I know I personally haven't bought much/anything in the past year since I was sitting at home all the time, and normally I do shop for clothes a good amount.

Eh. While I "get" luxury brands, I feel like it's always the name and not the product.

I'd rather spend a couple thousand US on a completely tailored suit with shoes than three thousand on an overcoat from Dior.

Leather goods are the same. Real leather goods from small shops for a few hundred US instead of thousands.

Dior doesn't make their money from the overcoats. You'll have a hard time finding competitive handbags or sneakers outside of similar luxury brands.

Yeah, because all the rich people fled London and Switzerland, spending the first quarter of the year in Dubai, Maldives or Tulum.

Of course sales are down when everyone who could afford it has been spending their time anywhere but Europe.

China seems to be the new hot spot.

The article says that before the pandemic, european sales were much dependant on tourists making their purchases in Europe. So it was Chinese and American people buying these items before as well. But before the pandemic, they bought them during a trip to Europe, and now via the web, closer to home.

...for highly-established, old-world European brands. Is it just that producing luxury goods is something that takes an economy a while to do, or does China make high-status stuff that's just under my radar?

High status to whom?

You need cachet and legacy to signal exclusivity, which is best obtained with time, and even if there were any sort of big Chinese fashion houses they haven’t been around long enough to earn that kind of cred.

This is the most off base comment I’ve heard in a long time. Turnover in fashion is CONSTANT. Even among the high end brands. You literally picked the most capricious industry to make that argument with?

China has taken all of that manufacturing prowess that the world has been pushing on to it, and turned around and made homegrown stuff that matches or surpasses the originals in terms of quality, and now, market popularity. (In China)

Pair this with the rising nationalism and middle class in China, and you’ve got a huge up swing in this area.

Ref: Chinese model friend

(I was super ignorant of all this until recently)

Is there a Chinese brand that is well known/large volume outside asia? The only thing I can maybe think of is Huishan Zhang or maybe angel chen or some niche street ware stuff. but i really doubt any non-fashion person would know that and I had to google 'who was that chinese designer at barneys' couldn't name the brand off top of my head.

Not saying there isn't a lot of talent and creativity in China, but there aren't any international luxury fashion houses on the level of a LVMH or Kering brand.

Sure brands and trends go in and out of style; Gucci-gang growth which is now slowing or reversing lol.

But for those who only care about a purse with a logo and aren't reading WWD or wearing the clothes, 'luxury' brands are pretty set in stone.

Seems more opportunity now though for independent brands with Instagram and celeb culture. I love Jacquemus. the purses & shoes drive it for women I think, but again it's tiny compared to LV.

We are talking about within China, in the context of my comment about China being a new hotspot. And to answer your first question, yes. (Although the traditional luxury brands still get TONS of play. The rising middle class LOVES their brand names.)

what brand is known outside china? even 1/10th of the brand recognition of a top LVMH brand?

Read my comment again for context.

The article is talking about big-name international brands and their sales, so I don't know why you're upset that everyone is talking about... big-name international brands and their sales.

> and now, market popularity. (In China)

Citation needed.

> China has taken all of that manufacturing prowess that the world has been pushing on to it, and turned around and made homegrown stuff that matches or surpasses the originals in terms of quality,

> Pair this with the rising nationalism and middle class in China, and you’ve got a huge up swing in this area.

That's all well and good, but no one was talking about this (including your original one-sentence comment) and I'm not sure how people were supposed to just magically get this subtext.

There's nothing wrong with the fact that it takes time to build an international fashion brand unless you think there's something wrong with it. CDG was started in 1969, 5 years after the Tokyo Olympics, and took until 1981 to do an international show. If you were to apply a similar trend to China, a Chinese fashion brand would reach the international stage sometime in the late 2020s, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I don't think it's so much about skill or talent. The artists are there. They can obvious make things. It seems more like just exposure and breaking out of Chinese market to get into your/our us & european culture.

There are some luxury Chinese fashion brands but like I commented below I don't think any that would be known by anyone who isn't reading WWD or vogue and spending $2k on a trendy dress.

I think the scale of their market in country is more than we assume though.

Like I remember that Rihana giant pizza fur dress thing. The designer who made it was on some show maybe Vice I can't remember - it was pretty cool she has a huge business making extremely lavishly large furs that aren't really worn in 'the west' anymore, very much a Chinese cultural niche.

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/oct/18/guo-pei-chin...

There is growing nationalist sentiment in China which is resulting in increased status of domestic brands among Chinese consumers and reduced status of foreign brands

Does China have luxury fashion brands that are high status abroad? Not many

It's mid-season and plenty of Europe is still in some sort of lockdown. I expect it to pick up again by summer, especially if tourism comes back to life.

Although, I believe people may wait to feel a little more secure in their future before they start to spend. There is a fear that winter will see yet another lockdown (despite vaccines). Until that dear subsides, spending may well be subdued.

As an European, I’m gonna guess that it’s likely that the comparatively conscious Europeans had grown even more self-aware of the mortality, the future, the past, and our choices. The ongoing trend of reducing travel, the carbon footprint and the global warming would be inversely proportional to luxury spending, and it probably shows in numbers like these.

Luxury spending is made to satisfy a very deep human need: show off purported wealth, possibly like animal dances before mating.

So, the carbon footprint and global warming, while interesting problems, won't exactly supercede mating parades in humans. Possibly instead, europeans lost a lot more money in the crisis, dont want to mate anymore, or stores are closed.

I doubt, as a European myself, that fringe political consideration mattered when choosing between a Vuitton and a chinese handbag. Possibly, the Vuitton had a smaller footprint.

second hand has way smaller footprint. Also your take about signaling wealth is hilarious. Do you think reasonally educated women would prefer a guy with luxurious clothes? For me and my network that would be obnoxious.

There is also counter signalling which you can read about. It explains why billionaires in Sillicon Valley wear H&M t-shirts and not L&V

In my experience women are surprisingly influenced by what clothes a guy wears. I've had a couple of women say to me that they are puzzled themselves as to why they are attracted to guys who dress well/cool in ways that don't really make logical sense.

when in the modern history attraction made logical sense? i thought attraction was a measure of physical/mental fitness when such traits mattered (pre-cavemen) for hunting and raising kids.

>second hand has way smaller footprint.

Guess what, handcrafted goods retain far more value and last much longer on the second hand market. The luxury industry and the second market have a lot of synergy.

>Do you think reasonally educated women would prefer a guy with luxurious clothes?

They do. Women much prefer men who aren't negligent about their appearance. And it's not just about bling.

>It explains why billionaires in Sillicon Valley wear H&M t-shirts and not L&V

Cucinelli and Loro Piana, not H&M :)

I'd argue that this sort of "showing off" has now mostly been replaced with driving an electric vehicle, consuming organic food or turning to vegan food (and talking about it), keeping your body in shape at the gym, etc...

All fairly expensive activities, but none of those include luxury fashion ;)

As with many other things, the pandemic might just have accelerated a change that was slowly happening anyway.

Brilliant comment - you also managed to describe what I already believed to be true, but in a much more succinct way.

There may be some merit to the "money problems" arguments, although I'm not sure that people buying luxury fashion items have been hit particularly hard by the crisis.

> Luxury spending is made to satisfy a very deep human need: show off purported wealth, possibly like animal dances before mating.

This seems more likely to me. To show off, you need to be in the presence of other people. With widespread lockdowns and bans on gatherings, there's less of an opportunity to do this.

The rich people in Europe aren't 100,000x richer than the average individual. They are 5x, sometimes 10x, and very rarely 100x richer. Most of people that were considered rich here really got poor, especially since many of them derived income from running service and tourism businesses. The few hyper-rich industrialists who profited are much less than a statistical error.

Consider: It is rather usual to be acquainted or even a friend with a dollar millionaire in the US, and low millions "aren't even much", while just few million euro places you near the absolute top in Europe.

Depends on where in Europe. The really rich tend to congregate in a few places. A few million won't get you far in Courchevel, you'll still feel poor in Porto Cervo and be nobody at all in London.

There's absolutely no carbon footprint in luxury spending, because luxury goods are by definition very high-markup. Every buck spent on a Birkin handbag saves that amount from being spent on a gas-guzzling SUV, or more realistically, considering the target group, from being spent on a couple of private jet flights that would emit tens of tons of CO2.

If anything, luxury spending must be promoted to reduce carbon intensity of national economies.

This is a hilarious take. I love it

Of course it depends which luxury spending. A buy a Van Gogh, not a megayacht campaign might help.

This is correct, but any luxury spending is still better than non-luxury for the same amount. Private jets are probably the worst, and even them are much better per dollar spent than non-luxury equivalent: cost of fuel makes a much smaller fraction of trip costs than with airlines.

The environmental criminals in the fashion industry aren't Channel, Hermès and the likes, they're the H&M and Zara of this world.

The carbon footprint of the luxury industry is probably insignificant compared to fast fashion dumping chemicals in South East Asian rivers.

Hermès seems to be doing a pretty good job with carbon offsetting https://finance.hermes.com/en/climate/

Which rich person is in Europe?

All my friends who got rich aren't living in EU, they are in Thailand, Dubai, China, Indonesia or US.

All of them have told me EU isn't a good place to spend your money, your money buys more in Asia and they'll only go back to Europe when they get old or run out of money because Europe is a good place to get old because of health services being offered there.

Other half friends who are in Europe don't have enough disposable income to afford more than a summer vacation to some other cheap European country.

Your friends probably aren't very rich :) For those with a 50MM+ net worth London is probably the most attractive place in the world, and it shows.

Please tell what's there in London which makes it the most attractive place?

No problem, but you don't have to trust me. The fact that the ultra rich from around the world are moving to London is very well documented. I'll list some reasons anyway:

I think we can agree that English is the lingua franca? This automatically renders any place which isn't English speaking less attractive to most people.

So out of the big cities we're left with London, New York, maybe Dubai and Hong Kong. I've lived in and arranged relocations for clients to all of these cities.

Out of these Dubai has a really unpleasant climate for half of the year, the rest are mostly okay.

Only NYC and London have reasonably available high end real estate, in HK an Dubai the quality of finishing tends to be really shit no matter how high end you go.

Schools? NYC and London are your only options if you want your kids to have the best education, London definitely edges ahead here and is reasonably close to top schools like Le Rosey.

Restaurants? Dubai is out, the rest are fairly even.

Demographics? If you're not Chinese you'll have an increasingly difficult time in HK, especially with the recent developments. The other cities are incredibly diverse.

Stability? HK is out, NYC will seem iffy to many thanks to the increasing polarization in American politics. Dubai's long term prospects remain to be seen, but despite Brexit UK seems more than okay.

Safety? Dubai and HK are incredibly safe as long as you don't upset the government. London is still much safer than NYC.

Location? Dubai and London win here. DXB and London are both extremely convenient air travel hubs. For most of the world NYC is far. HKG isn't great unless you're coming from Asia.

I think in the end for most of the ultra rich considering moving abroad it'll be a choice between NYC and London. Unless your family already holds US passports, odds are London is the better destination.

They are too poor, plus who are they going to impress all holed up in their houses (sorry, studios)

Out of curiosity, do you have numbers or specific insights on this? Whenever I’ve looked at European wages and costs of living it seemed as though not many would have access to the resources necessary for luxury goods, from my cursory levels of research.

That’s the point of luxury goods in Europe. They are not payed out of wages but out of your (inherited) fortune.

FYI most luxury brands come from EU and in particular France. We just tend to not eat our own bullshit, luxury clothing is for dumb people with money.

> luxury clothing is for dumb people with money.

Follow HN guidelines please

Yeah, you might rationalize it that way but the fact remains for the avg European those brands are pretty solidly out of reach. No one said there was no one who can afford them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com