• Arnault’s children take the stage as he bats away succession, again

• Galeries Lafayette’s third-best Chinese guide ran a money-laundering ring

• The fugitive who allegedly bought his way into ultra-luxe Aman deals

• LVMH lobbies Brussels on leather while cutting its last French tannery

• Prada’s €750 apology sandal

Arnault warns of ‘catastrophe’

Bernard Arnault used LVMH’s 2026 annual meeting last week to deliver a stark warning, telling shareholders that the Middle East war could spiral into a “global catastrophe” and that the group’s recovery (shares are down 30 per cent year-to-date) depends on a swift resolution. It reflects how seriously the conflict has and likely will continue to hit tourist spending and demand for luxury goods. Executives at Hermès, Kering, Richemont and, frankly, any business with exposure to wealthy customers in the Middle East, Asia and Europe should probably share this concern as oil hits $115 a barrel today. Puck’s Lauren Sherman writes that “Arnault’s relationship with Donald Trump is more important than ever now”, but it’s hard to see what influence he, or anyone else, has over the US President until after the midterms in November. Meanwhile, the FT’s Edward Luce writes, “Get used to the long Iran War”. If that’s true, get used to depressed luxury sales and share prices then, too.

The Arnault siblings take the mic

Arnault chose to put all five of his children on stage this year in a fascinating test of the nerves of these scions of industry. Delphine seemed the most confident, despite being forced to hold a microphone in the front of the stage, evoking Kendall “L to the OG” Roy. She did not break into song, instead boasting about the LVMH prize and boosting “genius” Jonathan Anderson at Christian Dior. She was third to take the stage after her younger brothers Frederic and Jean, who seemed very comfortable, perhaps because they have less at stake in the succession story. Alexandre seemed the most nervous, and Antoine, the next eldest after Delphine, seemed to hide a bit behind the lecturn by contrast.

In response to questions of succession at the meeting, the 77-year-old billionaire and CEO was characteristically dismissive. He pointed to his renewed contract and the active roles of his five children across the group, declining to be drawn further. “We’ll talk about all this again in seven or eight years”, he bluntly told investors. And since he now symbolically owns more than half of the group’s shares by capital and nearly two thirds of the controlling vote, he can afford to. LVMH short-seller Intern Pierre found it interesting that his son Alexandre Arnault used the meeting to pitch the group’s alcohol expansion plans in Africa, framing the continent as a long-term growth opportunity. Yes, Africa and Nigeria in particular are a growth story for the future, but that pitch will strike some investors rather irrelevant to their concerns about the languishing share price right now.

(Financial Times on AGM / Financial Times on LVMH sales / Intern Pierre / Lauren Sherman in Puck)

• A smaller luxury bellwether: Beiersdorf, owner of luxury skincare brand La Prairie, reports a Q1 sales decline and considers price hikes as the Middle East crisis hits Chinese travel retail and regional markets (Business of Fashion)

• Knight Frank says the global UHNWI population, aka people with more than $30 million of assets, rose to 713,626 in 2026 from 551,435 in 2021. Although now we think about it, considering how high inflation has been for the last few years, is that number particularly surprising? (Knight Frank)

Galeries Lafayette’s third-best Chinese guide was a money-laundering boss

French investigative weekly Le Canard Enchaîné has perhaps the juiciest dark luxury story of the week. Paris judicial police investigating money laundering raided a textile wholesale business in Aubervilliers in September, and found €150,000 in cash hidden in a false ceiling. They believe the cash was the proceeds of prostitution and trafficking rings, and that it was destined for the aisles of Galeries Lafayette, one of Paris’s most prestigious department stores.

The scheme works like this, according to L’CE. Criminal networks generate cash around Paris, with couriers collecting it on scooters from brothels and massage parlours. That cash is then handed to professional Chinese shoppers, known as daigou, which we have reported on previously, in envelopes and plastic bags, in €10,000 batches, on the shop floor of Lafayette itself. The daigou spend it on luxury goods to take back to China, where the same items cost 30 to 40 per cent more. They also pocket the VAT refund, again as previously reported. On top of making a profit, the money enters the store dirty and leaves clean.

Lafayette is the venue of choice because the store actively recruits these shoppers through Chinese travel agencies, paying generous kickbacks to the tour guides who deliver high-spending tourists. In 2025, according to an internal Lafayette document, the store’s ten best-performing Chinese guides earned €4.3 million in commission, on purchases of more than €50 million, largely in cash. Chinese customers account for 22 per cent of sales at the Haussmann flagship, which turned over €2 billion last year. The guide arrested in September as “the boss of the Chinese launderers” had, at the time, just finished the year ranked third on Lafayette’s own internal leaderboard of top Chinese guides. (Le Canard Enchaine)

Armani posts first results after Giorgio’s death

Armani Group is looking for an investor to take a stake in the company after the death of its founder Giorgio in September, and the latest set of results may not help that mission. Revenue fell 2.8 per cent last year, and CEO Giuseppe Marsocci warned of a “possible structural change in the approach to luxury and fashion”, adding “We cannot fail to recognize the need to adapt to a changing context”. Luxury rebound? What luxury rebound? (Business of Fashion)

Ultra-luxe Aman’s alleged links to ‘money laundering kingpin’

Ultra-luxury hotel brand Aman, where prices for a single night stay can exceed $5,000 a night, operates some of the world’s most exclusive properties and has cultivated a client base of heads of state, billionaires and ultra-high-net-worth individuals who prize discretion above all else. That discretion is very much at risk, as the company’s board is reportedly in turmoil after links to South African fixer Benjamin Mauerberger were exposed, according to Whale Hunting’s detailed account. Mauerberger, who is wanted on fraud and money laundering charges in Thailand, allegedly managed to put money into several Aman projects including a Janu-branded hotel in Dubai, and others in Japan and the Maldives. Aman investors including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Cain International understandably want to know how this happened. (Whale Hunting)

Brunello Cucinelli quietly tightens sanctions compliance

Italian luxury group Brunello Cucinelli, run and owned by the self-described eponymous “philosopher”, said it strengthened its controls to monitor compliance with EU sanctions on Russia in its 2025 annual report, reports Reuters. The firm commissioned an external law firm and its board adopted an “enhanced trade compliance procedure” in December, a few months after short-selling group Morpheus alleged in September that the firm continued selling goods in Russia in violation of those sanctions. You can find the disclosure on page 37 of its 86 page report, published last week. (Reuters)

Former Stella McCartney exec alleges price fixing

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The man in the photo is Milan prosecutor Paolo Storari, who has led investigations resulting in exposés of labour abuses in the supply chains of several luxury firms in the last few years. He should be the industry’s hero for helping bring horrific examples of labour exploitation to light so that the issues may be rectified. And yet, Storari has been criticised by figures including luxury loafer maker Tod’s founder and chair Diego Della Valle, who said Storari “should be ashamed” of his work in October.

Thanks to Storari’s work and the work of his office, we know about many cases of workers for subcontractors making bags and clothes for brands including Dior and Armani, some of whom were living and sleeping in the workplace in order to make their extraordinarily expensive items. One Chinese worker was forced to work 13 hours a day, seven days a week making items in a factory which supplied Loro Piana, and who was beaten so badly he had to stay in hospital for two months.

In early December, Italian police carried out inspections at the headquarters of 13 high-end fashion companies, seeking internal documents on governance and supply-chain controls, suggesting Storari’s work still has a long way to run.

Della Valle’s comments came before the Milan prosecutor’s office upped the stakes significantly in late November, alleging that Tod’s itself and three managers “were fully aware of and complicit in labour exploitation”. Until then, the investigations had been limited to the Chinese-owned workshops which supplied the luxury brands, and those brands had not been directly targeted by criminal probes, although several have been put under temporary court administration and paid fines. The office also requested that the court impose an advertising ban on Tod’s, and a court decision on that has since been delayed until February.

Tod’s said it had already cut off its relationship with the four subcontractors who are being investigated. “We would like to reiterate that our group is often considered a model of conduct and has always given the utmost consideration to the health and quality of life of its employees”, the company said in a statement at the time.

The FT’s Elizabeth Paton and Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli’s article about the reaction to all of this over the Christmas break explains how Storari has “turned a fringe issue into a national scandal”, potentially threatening the sanctity of the Made in Italy merchandise mark. Speaking at a Milan conference, he addressed the industry’s concerns that he’s gone overboard, saying “carta canta”, which literally means “paper sings”, or less poetically, facts are facts.

Storari has been investigating high fashion for a decade now, starting with a 2016 case looking at links between Milan’s Fiera Milano trade fair complex and the Calabrian and Sicilian mafia. In 2017, he prosecuted the Polish gangster who abducted British model Chloe Ayling in Milan. He has a formidable reputation tackling drug trafficking, election rigging and financial crimes linked to the ‘Ndrangheta, as well as the mafia’s infiltration of hardcore Italian football supporter groups. Storari is unlikely to stop his investigations until the industry can prove that it has cleaned up its supply chain.

In the rest of this Dark Luxury newsletter

• The Hermès family is now the world’s fifth richest

• A hedge fund for Birkins returns 40 per cent

• NFI: the inexorable decline of fashion magazines

• A quick look at Venezuelan luxury loot

Shifts in Hermès and LVMH family offices

The Hermès family is the fifth richest in the world according to the latest Bloomberg ranking, with a total net worth of $184.5 billion, up nearly $15 billion from last year. Part of the reason their wealth continues to grow might be down to their choice to increasingly diversify away from luxury. Krefeld, the family office which controls their fortune, launched a new investment arm called Breithorn Holding to do just that last year.

Chanel’s owners, the Wertheimers, are still at number nine on the list, but their total net worth is down $2 billion from last year. Last year, Arthur Heilbronn, a 38-year-old half brother of Chanel heirs Alain and Gerard Wertheimer quietly took on a more prominent role overseeing their sprawling investments through Mousse Partners, the discreet family office that manages the Chanel fortune. (Bloomberg News)

The Arnault family appears to be almost single-handedly holding up the Paris luxury home market. (FT)

The rise and rise of luxury discounting

About 35 to 40 per cent of luxury goods were sold at a discount last year according to research by Bain and Italian luxury goods association Altagamma, a five percentage point increase on the level ten years ago. Luxury margins are under pressure amid stalling creativity at the major fashion houses, declining quality, skyrocketing prices since the pandemic and a decline in sales from China. That’s illustrated by this chart which shows the decline in margins for luxury firms, back to levels not seen since 2009, if you exclude the one-off pandemic hit. (FT)

The inside story of Louis Vuitton’s ‘ship to nowhere’

“We are totally crazy, aren’t we?”, said LVMH boss Bernard Arnault to Louis Vuitton CEO Pietro Beccari at the opening of a new store in Shanghai , which is shaped like a giant “ship that never sails”. (WSJ)

A hedge fund for Birkins

Asset manager Luxus, which describes itself as “Luxury Alternative Asset Management”, buys secondhand Birkins and Kelly bags on the secondary market in order to flip them for a profit, and it claims to have achieved a 40 per cent return in its first year after raising $1 million to buy 36 bags. You can even shop their “portfolio” online via retailer My Gemma. Bloomberg Opinion’s Allison Schrager explains why investing this way might not be such a great idea, although betting on Birkins perhaps isn’t such a bad idea if you had to pick a luxury asset. (Bloomberg News)

Luxury handbags may be shoddier than you think, reports the Economist, which looks at the rapidly hiking prices of cowhide bags despite questionable quality. It draws a sharp contrast with Hermès, which uses a single artisan to make its Birkin bags. (Economist)

From the archive: If you do decide to invest in Birkins, don’t stray too far from the tried and tested classics…

How Russians get sanctioned luxury goods

Russian shoppers are paying double for luxury goods from Europe. “This is something of an open secret,” said one unnamed luxury chief executive in Milan, speaking to the FT. The story is about Russian retailer Tsum in Moscow, which says “The tsum.ru website is accessible only within the Russian Federation”, but it’s not hard to get around it.

Above is a screenshot of a Burberry wool coat selling for 460,000 Russian roubles, (£4,181.65), a more than 55 per cent markup on the price in the UK. The EU banned exporting goods to Russia with a wholesale price of more than €300 in 2022, but large volumes are sold to buyers in Turkey, UAE and China and then re-exported. The arbitrage opportunities are obvious. (FT)

In the rest of this newsletter… for paid subscribers

Another 2,000 words of fascinating links and analysis on:

• The decline of fashion magazines

• LVMH vs Morgan Stanley

• The Bolibourgeoisie’s luxury loot

• How big is the illegal trade in falcons?

• The letter of the year is K(-shaped economy)

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• Why a Hermès heir is suing LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault

• Moët Hennessy’s HR team is reportedly undergoing a shake-up

• Harrods’ Christmas turkeys linked to farm where workers were filmed urinating in pens

• Proof the super-rich never noticed the luxury downturn

• Hermès is selling three branded plasters for $200

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Earlier this year, Dark Luxury ran a story about the British Fashion Council, drawing on interviews with a multi-award-winning female designer, as well as Patrick Grant, Oliver Spencer and Peter Howarth, to show how the organisation excelled at hype but was increasingly over…

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• Tod’s is the latest luxury brand to investigated for labour exploitation

• Kering’s consultancy-led reckoning begins

• MPs “disgusted” after Trump slashes Swiss tariffs after gifts

• London’s New Bond Street beats Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue

• The end of mushroom leather?

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Radenko Milaković is annoyingly and disappointingly a very nice man. Try as I might over the course of our hour-long Zoom conversation, I did my damndest to dislike him — but I simply couldn’t. You see, anything to do with sailing usually smacks of twattery, doesn’t it? From the “château to the bateau,” I assumed he’d be a cross between a…

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First, in this week’s Dark Luxury news round-up

• Richemont crushes expectations

• JLR cyberattack drags down UK GDP

• Switzerland slashes US tariffs shortly after Trump gets a Rolex gift

• Kering’s new CEO Luca de Meo was reportedly courted by LVMH

Richemont beats expectations and Burberry’s back to growth

Sales in the jewellery division of Cartier owner Richemont were up 14 per cent to €5.21 billion in the second quarter, another signal of the luxury industry’s recovery despite tariffs and high gold prices. (Bloomberg News) The news offers more hope for the wider industry that the broader sales slump driven by poor demand in China is ending. Vogue Business’s Laure Guilbault’s headline about the news said that these sales have surged “against the odds”, but we’ve been reporting for a while that jewellery brands are holding up better in the slump thanks to the relative increase in the value of jewellery versus handbags. “Ten years ago, the money to buy a particular bracelet from a popular jewelry brand could buy 1.5 Chanel handbags. Now, it barely covers the cost of one,” said Zuzanna Pusz, Head of European Luxury Goods at UBS back in May.

Burberry’s store sales returned to growth in the second quarter for the first time in two years and overall Ssles in China were up three per cent, although total revenue was down by three per cent to £1.03 billion. (Vogue Business). “Under Schulman, Burberry is retreating from its move upmarket and refocusing on its classic outerwear products”, is the key line from the FT story. (The Financial Times)

The industry’s biggest beast LVMH is set to open major stores in China next month for its brands Louis Vuitton, Dior, Tiffany and Loro Piana, and is considering further expansions. (Bloomberg News)

Look to the Middle East and India, control your supply chains to reduce their social and environmental impact to avoid bad press, focus on creativity and don’t raise prices too much, says the Economist in this round-up of advice for the luxury industry. “In India, the population earning over $10,000 per year, currently the top income quintile, is expected to grow by 15 per cent a year between 2024 and 2030, according to UBS”. (The Economist)

We already knew that the cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover and the subsequent shutdown of its supply chain might have cost the UK car industry about £2 billion. Now the Bank of England says it contributed to a headline fall in the entire country’s GDP. (NBC News and Ed Conway on X)

Semiconductor manufacturer Nexperia purchased a luxury Dutch estate with farmhouse, outbuildings and swimming pool for €6.7 million to serve as a residence for Chinese CEO Wing, who was ousted just four months after the purchase. His exit kicked off a geopolitical crisis which nearly brought the entire car industry to its knees. (RTL via Finbarr Bermingham)

Other Dark Luxury news

La Lettre reports on how Gucci-owner Kering CEO Luca de Meo held informal talks with Bernard and Delphine Arnault regarding his possible hiring at LVMH in January before he joined its rival. “The younger Arnault siblings opposed his entry into LVMH”, they report. (La Lettre)

Switzerland secured a massive US tariff cut from 39 per cent to 15 per cent this week, just a week after a mysterious Rolex clock appeared on Trump’s desk as a “symbolic gesture of appreciation” from Rolex CEO Jean-Frédéric Dufour. (Hodinkee)

Puck acquired Air Mail, the digital weekly newsletter founded by former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, in a cash and stock deal valued at $16 million, with Carter stepping down as editor following the acquisition. (The New York Times)

Vogue folded Teen Vogue into the main brand’s website, just like it did with Vogue Business. The Free Press effectively says good riddance, saying that the publication’s readership “included virtually no teens”. Fine, but the important thing is Teen Vogue did interesting, eye-catching stories and photo shoots, and now it’s been hobbled by Condé Nast. (The Free Press)

Aston Martin’s chair explored a buyout of the struggling carmaker with a Saudi fund to take the company private. Shares are down a whopping 99 per cent since the company’s IPO. (The Financial Times)

Tech moguls were turned away from Lisbon airport earlier this month after it reached its limit for private jet landings. (The Financial Times)

UK military top brass mixed with defence industry executives at a luxury alpine event. (The Financial Times)

A corruption investigation into figures linked to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly found that his former business partner Timur Mindich had a gold toilet in his apartment. (The Financial Times)

We want to know: which “very wealthy people” paid to go on a “sniper safari” during the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s? Milan prosecutors have opened a murder investigation into claims that wealthy Italians paid up to €100,000 to shoot at civilians in Sarajevo during the 1990s Bosnian war, with different rates allegedly charged to kill men, women or children from Serb positions. (BBC News)

Dark Luxury was in the FT yesterday writing about the new owner of Fabergé, one of the most historically interesting luxury companies. My interest was piqued when I saw he was Russian, the first in decades to own the brand. A little digging led me to a Telegram group where he was sharing surprisingly candid details about Fabergé’s existing jewellery stock, which the company’s own website suggests is still worth millions.

I met Musanov along with the photographer at the former owner Gemfields’ London offices, where a wall-mounted CCTV screen streamed footage from its mine in Zambia. Only a few days after the sale went through the mining company unearthed an 11,685-carat “buffalo” emerald that, Musanov joked with me, might have meant the company wouldn’t have needed to sell to him at all. Timing is everything.

Paid subscribers can read an extract of the story below the paywall. Hopefully we’ll see some of you down at the Christie’s auction house for the Winter Egg sale next month.

Fabergé’s Russian owner hatches plan to revive brand

Originally published in the Financial Times.

Sergei Mosunov is trying to buy history. The Russian tech investor, who bought luxury brand Fabergé for $50mn from UK mining company Gemfields in August, is travelling to Qatar and Saudi Arabia. His mission: to try and secure the 1913 Winter Egg before it goes up for auction at Christie’s in London in December with an estimated price of $27mn.

As it is one of the most celebrated of the 50 imperial eggs made for the Russian tsars, Mosunov is not optimistic. “He will want it to go to auction,” he says, speaking of the Qatari emir who owns it. That this single antique egg could command a price approaching that of the entire modern brand shows the challenge Mosunov faces.

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We first published this investigation in late 2024, at the height of Burberry’s identity crisis.

A year later, as fashion undergoes what editors are calling The Great Fashion Reset — every major house rewriting its codes of taste — the questions feel sharper than ever.

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This newly optimised edition updates the data, leadership shifts and mood inside British luxury, and adds fresh context to how a national symbol lost its way.

Because even in a €1.5-trillion industry, the hardest thing to measure is still the magic.

“It’s not a brand that I get asked to look at by my clients, even my high net worth ones,” says Anna Berkeley, personal stylist and Financial Times columnist. “There is literally zero interest.”

Something has gone badly wrong at Burberry, Britain’s only global luxury brand.

The company is now worth around £4.17 billion — down from a peak of nearly £10 billion at the start of 2023.

Retail revenue fell 6 % in Q1 FY26 to £433 million, with comparable store sales down 1 % year-on-year and weakness particularly pronounced in Greater China (–5 %) and Asia Pacific (–4 %).

In May 2025, Burberry announced plans to cut around 1,700 jobs globally — roughly 18 % of its workforce — by 2027, in a bid to save £60 million and refocus investment on product and brand storytelling (Financial Times and The Guardian).

The move underscored just how deep the company’s identity and profitability issues had become.

Before we dive into what’s gone wrong, it’s worth revisiting what we wrote on our About page when Dark Luxury launched:

“Fashion and luxury are not as scientific as other investments because they are 50 per cent art and magic — the untouchable — and 50 per cent business.”

And it’s the “magic” part — the emotional, cultural and aesthetic charge — that Burberry seems to have misplaced.

The Rise and the Romance

Burberry’s modern revival was masterminded by Rose Marie Bravo, the Bronx-born former Saks Fifth Avenue CEO who took over in 1997.

Before her tenure, Burberry was largely a licensing business, its famous check plastered across umbrellas and golf caps.

Bravo bought back licences, moved the brand upmarket and hired Christopher Bailey from Gucci.

Her successor Angela Ahrendts — another American — took the company public and doubled down on one icon: the trench coat.

She and Bailey built a romantic vision of Britishness that resonated globally: rain-washed London streets, golden light, polite melancholy.

“When I first met her, she was absolutely clear,” says Peter Howarth, journalist and CEO of SHOW Media.

“The first outfit in the show is a trench coat. There’s always a trench coat in the campaign. It doesn’t have to be classic — but it has to be a trench coat.”

During that period, Burberry’s market value rose from £2 billion to nearly £7 billion.

It was the definition of bourgeois chic: elegant, emotive, profitable.

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• The latest power plays at LVMH and Kering

• The surprise winner of the Jaguar Land Rover cyberattack

• The definitive guide for how to pronounce Hermès

• Was the Louvre heist an inside job?

• Vogue Business folds into Vogue.com

The great luxury game

While traders fretted about the slowdown in luxury sales, selling up and driving down the share price of Bernard Arnault’s LVMH empire, he was playing chess. (Not literally.) Between February and October 2025, as LVMH shares took a hit from weaker earnings, Arnault snapped up €1.4 billion worth of the company’s stock. This strategic buying spree, executed through family holding companies, allowed him to tighten his grip on the luxury behemoth he founded nearly four decades ago, all at a healthy discount. The LVMH share price is up more than 25 per cent in the last six months. (Bloomberg)

The company has made a substantial investment to develop the legendary Orient Express brand. The firm reportedly invested €131 million to buy half of the equity from hospitality company Accor, gaining stakes in its hotels, trains and cruise ventures. L’Informé revealed the full structure of this complex deal, which expands into ultra-luxury travel with €7,000 train journeys, €1,280-a-night hotels and €316,000 cruises, with LVMH holding an option for full control in 2027. (L’Informé)

As Arnault fortifies his empire, his firm’s chief rival, Kering, continues its shake-up. The group’s new CEO, Luca de Meo, has brought in consultants from Bain and BCG to conduct a thorough review of the company’s portfolio of brands. (La Lettre). There is speculation that a sale of Alexander McQueen could be on the cards, reports Lauren Sherman at Puck, who says the brand’s London headquarters are likely to see a 20 per cent reduction in staff. (Notably, McQueen was one of the few brands de Meo mentioned in a Vogue Business profile we mentioned in our previous round-up, so the brand is obviously on his mind.) (Puck News).

The question of who will take over continues to hang heavy in the air at Armani. Puck’s Sherman says LVMH looks less and less likely, but Ferrari, eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica and beauty behemoth L’Oréal are all seen as potential buyers. (Puck News)

Hermès appointed Grace Wales Bonner, 35, as creative director of men’s ready-to-wear last week, and she’ll debut her first collection for the French house in January 2027. Known for her Adidas collaborations and, in China, a strong Gen Z following on Xiaohongshu (China’s answer to Instagram), the move is about targeting China’s young luxury consumers, writes Jing Daily’s Sadie Bargeron. (Jing Daily)

Speaking of Hermés, “My father used to say that if you want to pronounce Hermès correctly, think of a traffic jam in the air,” says Pierre-Alexis Dumas in this Wall Street Journal profile. “Air mess.” (WSJ)

Vogue Business, Condé Nast’s much-hyped rival to Business of Fashion and WWD, is being rather unceremoniously folded into Vogue.com after just six years. The venture, which charged a hefty subscription fee is a cautionary tale for those who try to build a business on the fickle whims of the fashion world, says Marcus Jaye, aka The Chic Geek. Don’t we know it. (The Chic Geek)

Cyberattack winners and losers

The recent cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover is the costliest in UK history according to researchers at the Cyber Monitoring Centre. The hack, which paralysed the carmaker’s operations for five weeks, is projected to cost a jaw-dropping £1.9 billion. The attack sent shockwaves through the entire supply chain, affecting an estimated 5,000 businesses, and almost certainly affecting UK GDP figures. The full recovery is not expected until January 2026. (BBC News)

The production halt had an immediate and dramatic impact on the UK’s manufacturing output. In September, car production plummeted by 27.1 per cent, while commercial vehicle production nosedived by a staggering 77.1 per cent. The combined effect was a 35.9 per cent drop in total vehicle production across the whole country, a clear illustration of the immense disruption caused by the attack. (Top Gear)

In a bizarre twist of fate, the production shutdown at JLR created an unexpected opening for Aston Martin. With fewer British-made cars being shipped to the US, Aston was able to export its vehicles at a lower 10 per cent tariff rate, avoiding the steeper 27.5 per cent tariff that kicks in after a certain quota is met. It was a rare piece of good news for the struggling luxury carmaker, which has been grappling with widening losses – you’ll remember last week that crazy stat, that financial results analysed by the FT suggest that every car sold since 2014 has cost the company about £45,000! (FT, WSJ)

While European carmakers are licking their wounds, their Chinese counterparts are celebrating a major victory. In September, Chinese car brands achieved their best-ever month of sales in Europe, capturing a record 7.4 per cent of the market, led by BYD, SAIC’s MG brand and Chery. It’s a watershed moment that signals a dramatic shift in the continent’s automotive landscape. (Bloomberg) The road ahead is not without its bumps for Chinese EV makers. Nio, once a darling of the premium EV market, is reportedly losing its charge, a reminder of the intense competition and volatility in the electric vehicle space. (FT)

The investigation into the audacious jewel heist at the Louvre has taken a tantalising turn, with detectives now working on the theory that it was an inside job. (The Telegraph). Five more suspects have been arrested since our story last week, bringing the total to seven, yet the priceless royal gems remain missing. (FT)

A multi-million euro art forgery ring has been dismantled in Germany, with the main suspect a 77-year-old German man. The operation, which spanned Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, reportedly involved the elderly gentleman peddling a remarkable collection of fake Picasso, Rembrandt and Frida Kahlo works. (BBC News)

In London, a father and son have been sentenced for what seems like a remarkably specific theft. Liam Middleton-Gomm received a two year and eight month prison sentence for stealing Damien Hirst–designed jackets from a Hammersmith studio. His father, Leslie, who had photos of the stolen items and searched “Damien Hirst” and “leather jackets” online, received a conditional discharge for handling stolen goods. (Met Police)

Also in London, a family is seeking a private tutor for their one-year-old child, with a salary of £180,000 per year. The goal? To immerse the toddler in “quintessentially British experiences to help hone his habits, outlooks, tastes and sporting preferences”, and secure a place at a top public school like Eton or Harrow. The race to the top begins in the cradle. (Guardian)

In Japan, the country’s new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, has catapulted Hamano Inc., a 145-year-old leather goods manufacturer into social media feeds in the country. The viral attention has led to a flood of orders: everyone’s an influencer these days, even PMs. (Bloomberg)

Two-thirds of Britons earning over £100,000 believe they are going to heaven, according to a survey by More in Common, while middle earners are the most likely to think they are destined for hell. Camel, meet the eye of the needle. (Twitter)

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What do we really mean when we say something is priceless? The word suggests purity — a value so immense it transcends money altogether. But the theft of Napoleon’s jewels from the Louvre’s Galerie d’Apollon speaks to a more complicated truth: some things are only priceless until we, collectively as a culture, decide to put a price on them.

When I spoke to Tobias Kormind, managing director of Mayfair diamond merchants 77 Diamonds, he told me the jewels are unlikely ever to be seen again.

“Unless the thieves are caught early — which usually means someone tells on someone — the stones will be broken up and disappear into the market,” he said.

Once recut, the diamonds lose their identity and, with it, their history. The thieves don’t care about Napoleon; they care about liquidity.

Perhaps that’s also why some people find Bernard Arnault so objectionable: he seems to care about the magic of luxury only insofar as it lifts the LVMH share price. There’s little evidence of sentimental attachment or even enjoyment of luxury — qualities that have made him both wildly successful and faintly reviled.

A jewel’s power, Tobias reminded me, isn’t in its carats but in its context.

Read more

• LVMH shares surge after easing sales decline. Is the slump over?

• Gucci, Chloé, and Loewe fined €157 million for price fixing

• SSENSE collapse exposes fashion’s broken economics

• Private jet spending is up 66 per cent among top US firms

• Art thieves look for meltdown value as gold hits record highs

• Mined diamonds are ‘whatever’ in Manhattan

Is the luxury downturn over?

LVMH’s latest results hint that the luxury downturn may finally be bottoming out. Third-quarter sales in its fashion and leather goods division fell two per cent, a marked improvement from the nine per cent drop in the previous quarter. Some analysts see this as the first sign that the luxury cycle is turning, helped by steadier prices, stronger volumes and renewed creative energy. Shares jumped 14 per cent and lifted rivals from Hermès to Kering. The question now is whether this the start of luxury’s recovery, or just a pause in LVMH’s decline before the next squeeze? (FT Lex)

Not everyone agrees the worst is over. Analysts at Berenberg argue the luxury “supercycle” that powered three decades of growth has ended, and cut LVMH to hold and Kering to sell. They see a structural demand problem, not just a temporary slowdown. Weaker Chinese spending, squeezed middle-class consumers and changing habits among younger buyers are combinining to drive the shift, they say. The bank forecasts only two to three per cent annual growth for the sector in the medium term, roughly half the sector’s historic rate, and warns that valuations now look stretched after the recent relief rally. (Bloomberg News)

Luca de Meo’s fashion month

Luca de Meo’s first fashion month made one thing clear – the engineers and data analysts are in charge. In a brief Vogue Business interview, the new Gucci owner’s CEO said of his opinion of the fashion weeks, “Forgive me, but I don’t approach this from a creative standpoint... I asked the team for a quantitative analysis to assess the visibility and impact of our shows. I’m simply looking at the data objectively”. One of those running the numbers is Thomas Cuntz, a Renault veteran and new VP of talent development, reportedly nicknamed “Iznogoud”. As L’Informé put it, luxury’s “world of glitz and perfume” is now being managed by engineers”, not aesthetes. (L’Informé)

Giuseppe Marsocci has been named Armani’s new CEO, tasked with steering the brand’s growth and modernisation under the Ern group’s strategic vision. (Vogue Business)

Veronique Nichanian has stepped down as Hermès menswear artistic director after a remarkable 37 year run, prompting a search for her successor to carry forward the Hermès menswear legacy. (Business of Fashion)

Gucci, Chloe and Loewe fined for price fixing

The EU has issued a €157 million fine against Gucci, Chloé and Loewe, exposing how major luxury houses tried to rig the system by dictating what independent retailers could charge. These brands, already boasting some of the world’s highest margins in global business, forced stores to keep prices and discount windows identical to their own, effectively fixing resale prices across Europe. Regulators called it a direct attack on “genuine price competition.” No wonder the new status symbol is shifting from overpriced handbags to luxury travel, where the experience, at least, feels real. (FT)

Talking of luxury travel, global spending on luxury hospitality is forecast to hit $390 billion by 2028, up from $239 billion in 2023. Analysts warn hotels could repeat fashion’s mistakes by overbuilding and hiking prices until even first-class travellers start to feel fleeced. (Economist)

What SSENSE’s collapse tells us about the fashion business

Good on 1 Granary for publishing the full list of brands and factories left unpaid after SSENSE’s collapse. The amount of financial loss is nearly ten times larger than Matchesfashion’s liquidation last year. The piece argues this is evidence that the entire online wholesale model has turned exploitative, propped up by private equity and late payments that squeeze independent designers. Each unpaid invoice represents a small brand, factory or clothes maker financing a broken system. The article demands a new fashion infrastructure built around cooperation, fair terms and creative survival.

The creditor list itself reads like a surreal shopfront. Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS sits beside Maison Margiela, Versace and Acne Studios, next to micro-labels, one-person studios and £1 placeholder claims. Hype brands like Amiri and Fear of God share space with heritage sportswear and small jewelry makers. And then there’s the freight companies, the UK’s HMRC and Meta and Google invoices, which dwarf many brand balances. It’s the whole fashion stack in one spreadsheet. (1 Granary)

US corporate elite fly higher than ever

Median spending on private and chartered flights by the US’s 500 largest companies jumped 66 per cent between 2020 and 2024, according to Equilar data reported by the Wall Street Journal. Executives like Mark Zuckerberg, John Tyson and Ellen Gordon all logged multimillion-dollar air travel bills, even as many firms cut costs and jobs. Private jet spending has risen across nearly every major industry, turning executive air perks into a post-pandemic norm. (Sherwood News)

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We first published this conversation with bestselling author Will Storr in March 2025, when Dark Luxury was still a smaller operation with fewer subscribers. We’re bringing it back with an update now because it feels newly relevant — proof that, somehow, the world’s most unserious shoe remains our most serious fashion signal.

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With fashion deep in what editors are calling The Great Fashion Reset — almost every major house unveiling a new creative director and a new vision — it feels like the perfect moment to revisit Storr’s ideas about how desire in luxury is made, not just commercially and creatively but at the deepest psychological and emotional level.

Just how much is too much for a pair of loafers?

Take the ones on my feet right now: Gucci, plain black with a gold buckle. They cost £810 today. The same pair set me back £185 when Tom Ford still reigned at the house. Even then it felt criminally expensive, especially for a student — something to keep quiet about.

Now, after years writing about shoes for GQ and The Times, I know £810 is absurd. Yet here they are, gleaming beside the George Cleverleys, John Lobbs and Edward Greens, the holy trinity of English shoemaking. Those brands arguably offer better craftsmanship and value for money, but they don’t possess the same talismanic power.

What’s wrong with me? Am I an idiot?

According to writer Will Storr — author of The Status Game, The Science of Storytelling and his latest, A Story Is a Deal— no, I’m simply human. One of the many fuelling a $1.5 trillion global appetite for expensive things no one really needs.

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• The stakes are high for Jonathan Anderson’s after his Dior womenswear debut

• Brunello Cucinelli’s stock swings after Russia short seller allegations

• Antoine Arnault knighted — three months after his sister

• Louis Vuitton wins a $584 million judgement against a mall in Atlanta

• Why The Guardian’s $400 jumper is good, act…

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What is the point of London Fashion Week? It’s a question worth asking as new CEO Laura Weir has just presided over her first season. At one level, the answer is obvious: high-octane socialising aka parties. Running into editors, former interviewees, old friends, new friends. It was a joy, for instance, to see Mimma Viglezio at the Richard James x Derrick event on Clifford Street, before ending up dancing with Mel Blatt and Jaime Winstone, who were both DJing at the brand new Bunga 90. For this alone, London is truly world-class. So far, so fabulous.

But what about diversity? One industry insider — themselves Black — put it to me, only half-jokingly: “Darling, I’m bored of diversity. Where are we going next?” At first she meant the after party, but the line stuck. Diversity has been fashion’s buzzword for years, yet the reality on the runway, boardroom and masthead often feels more like surface-level optics than lasting change.

This isn’t the first time we’ve asked what the British Fashion Council is really for. In our earlier deep dive into the organisation, designers and industry veterans told us bluntly that the BFC risked being little more than a “glorified party planner,” more adept at spectacle than at providing the structural support British fashion needs. With Weir now at the helm, expectations are higher — and London Fashion Week becomes the stage on which both the parties and the politics of fashion play out.

That’s why one of the most compelling events of the week wasn’t a catwalk show or a press dinner, but a panel discussion in Hoxton Square: “Recalibrating Fashion’s Inclusivity Lens: With Purpose & Action.” Moderated by model James Corbin and casting director, Marie Claire, it brought together five industry experts:

• Alessia Golfetto — creative producer, stylist, former Cosmopolitan UK Contributing Curve Editor, and founder of Thick Threads, a plus-size community and retail space in London.

• Dr. Soljana Çili — Senior Lecturer in the Psychology of Fashion at UAL, whose research explores the intersection of dress, memory, and mental health.

• Maximilian Raynor — rising British designer pushing boundaries across menswear and womenswear with structural experimentation and a radical approach to inclusivity.

• Sara Brown — designer and consultant known for her bold use of colour, sustainability, and her work with brands on expanding size ranges.

• Chris Amfo — stylist and fashion editor at CircleZeroEight magazine with an eye for sports, creativity and culture, whose clients range from emerging musicians to established talent.

It might seem odd to talk about body positivity in a room full of the young, slim, and conventionally beautiful — and I’ll admit, I was cynical at first. But what followed was a sharp, funny, sometimes uncomfortable unpicking of the structural, cultural, and financial barriers still holding back true body diversity in luxury fashion. Even when the market, and the money, are there in plain sight.

Below, we’ve packaged together the highlights — grouped into themes that show where the industry is stuck, and where the fixes might lie.

The cost (and hidden opportunity) of inclusivity

As ever, even with the best of intentions, it comes down to money. Designer Maximilian Raynor — known for sculptural gowns built from strips of tweed, herringbone, ribbon and chunky yarns in unexpected combinations — laid out the costs:

“If you’re doing ready-to-wear, you’ll spend £300–£400 per pattern, £120 to digitise, and another £120 for each size you grade. That’s before selling a single piece”.

For an emerging brand, those extra costs can mean the difference between pulling off a collection and going bust.

Raynor’s ribbon-based pieces are flexible enough to be styled across sizes — one sample dress was worn both by a standard-sample model in an editorial and by Ashley Graham on the Cannes red carpet. In this instance, size-inclusivity wasn’t a problem to be solved but an opportunity to be embraced.

Subscribe to unlock the full debate with insights on tokenism, missing sizes, fashion psychology, and the grassroots fixes luxury still hasn’t caught up with.

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• Gucci gets another CEO

• Luxury reels from a wave of cyberattacks

• Bloomberg’s Loro Piana’s vicuña scandal reportedly drove sales

• Lotus’s Porsche dreams collapse into “La-La Land”

• Royal handbag diplomacy snubs Burberry in favour of Anya Hindmarch

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In the Game of Thrones that is mass luxury, one house stands above them all: Hermès, which has defied the downturn with a string of positive results, while rivals LVMH and Kering stumble from one crisis to the next. The question is why? How has Hermès, with its single brand, briefly managed to overtake LVMH earlier this year, when not so long ago it was a takeover target?

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To find out, Dark Luxury spoke to Dana Thomas. Author of the landmark Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre (2007), Thomas has spent almost four decades reporting on the luxury business and has enjoyed access to Hermès that few, if any, journalists have matched. For a 2011 Wall Street Journal feature she toured its ateliers in Pantin, the silk studios in Lyon, and the inner sanctums of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré headquarters. She has interviewed Pierre-Alexis Dumas (creative director), Axel Dumas (now CEO), and Patrick Thomas (the first non-family chief executive of Hermès). Dana Thomas is one of the rare journalists ever allowed inside this famously secretive family firm. She now writes regularly about culture and luxury on her own Substack, Style Files.

The key to Hermès’ success is simple: “If you maintain your integrity, customers keep coming back. You’re not a trend that comes and goes — you stay the course”. She goes further: “There are two ways of looking at it: you’re either in the business of beautiful products, or you’re in the business of beautiful profits. If it’s products, the profits will come. But if it’s the other way around, and you start cutting corners — outsourcing, cutting costs — that undermines the integrity of the product and the brand”.

In her Wall Street Journal reporting and in Deluxe, Thomas described how artisans in the Pantin workshop handcraft Kellys and Birkins the same way it has been done for more than a century. Each bag is entrusted to a single artisan, who cuts the hides, assembles the pieces, and sews the seams using the traditional saddle stitch — two needles passing through the same hole in opposite directions, tightened with waxed thread. This is then gently tapped with a hammer and sanded down flat for a smooth, uniform finish. “In my 30 years at Hermès, what has changed? Nothing. People change, but not the technique,” atelier head Lionel Prudhomme told her.

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The same goes for its famous silk scarves. While competitors buy prefab twill from China, Hermès still weaves its own in Lyon from silk raised on its farm in Brazil. Scarves, with their ornate and highly detailed designs, are hand-printed in dozens of dazzling colours, their hems rolled and stitched by hand for that finish so prized by collectors. Queen Elizabeth II, for instance, had a large Hermès scarf collection that she wore year after year, becoming a part of her signature style. Perfume, too, isn’t outsourced to the industrial labs that supply Procter & Gamble and Unilever. It is created by an in-house perfumer in a studio near Grasse, the centre of traditional French perfumery.

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Even as the market for mass luxury roared and giants like Kering and LVMH cashed in by outsourcing production, Hermès’ slow-and-steady rise was something Thomas saw coming back in 2007…

This is where the real story begins. Dana Thomas reveals the lessons from inside Hermès that most rivals refuse to hear — and why integrity has quietly become the most powerful strategy in luxury.

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Louis Vuitton is being investigated for potentially violating money-laundering regulations in the case. The prosecutors allege that the suspicious purchasing patterns should have been identified by the Louis Vuitton shop, even though the defendant made sure to spend just under the €10,000 cash threshold which triggers mandatory reporting obligations.

Prosecutors say the shopping spree was funded by another person who collected the proceeds from organised crime, passed them on to buyers, who then laundered them via Louis Vuitton purchases. The handbags were sent back to China and Hong Kong, where they could be sold for a profit and, crucially, without any clear link to the criminal activities which paid for them.

This unprecedented legal development is one of the most public exposés so far of the dark underbelly of daigou, the common practice of Chinese shoppers buying luxury goods on behalf of others outside China, a favourite topic of Dark Luxury.

Regular readers will be familiar with our previous investigations which identified similar purchasing behaviour in the Barcelona Louis Vuitton store, where Chinese buyers used student mules to secure dozens of handbags under €10,000. Our sources said this amounted to roughly half of the store’s sales over a two year period.

Daigou, which literally means to “buy on behalf of”, has grown into a $57 billion annual grey market. It evolved from an ancient trading practice into a sophisticated criminal enterprise exploiting luxury brands, tax systems and taking advantage of students across the globe.

Dark Luxury spoke to Laurence Howland, a financial investigator with three decades of experience at the UK’s HMRC including time as fiscal crime liaison officer at the British embassy in Beijing. He says the story of daigou, and the shadow banking variant which often accompanies it called hawala, begins centuries ago on the ancient Silk Road, where informal value transfer systems first emerged to facilitate trade across vast distances and hostile territories.

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From the Silk Road to modern day daigou

Long before Louis Vuitton existed, merchants along the Silk Road developed hawala, an informal banking system that moved value across borders without physically transferring money. Hawala is mentioned in the Quran as “exchange of debts”, with Muhammad himself urging traders to act honestly using the technique. Under ancient hawala, a trader in Constantinople could deposit silver with a hawaladar (an informal money broker in the system) and receive a coded message. Weeks later, a partner in Beijing could present that code and collect the equivalent value in local currency, minus a commission.

This system, born of necessity in an era of bandits and unreliable governments, required only trust and a network of relationships, and didn’t require banks, paperwork or any government oversight. Hawala became the foundation for what academics call Informal Value Transfer Systems. In China, similar practices evolved into underground banking. Together, these laid the groundwork for modern daigou.

“Daigou represents the modern evolution of these ancient informal value transfer systems”, said Howland. “The fundamental mechanics haven’t changed. It’s still about moving value across borders while circumventing official channels”.

Daigou’s modern story began not only with the Silk Road but also in places like Manzhouli, a remote city on the Russian border. In the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese shoppers would cross into Russia to buy goods unavailable at home, then resell them in local markets. Over time, what started as personal errands became organised trade networks, an early echo of today’s globalised daigou system.

Poisonous dried milk: daigou goes mainstream

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Follow the money. That’s what Dark Luxury is about: explaining the money to the creatives, and the creative to the money people. That’s why we spoke to Intern Pierre back in June, a family-office investor, short-seller and luxury obsessive, who was quietly building a following among the very executives he was betting against.

His cheeky nom de plume caught our attention, but what really mattered was the substance of his contrarian calls. His bearish view on LVMH struck a nerve. The story became one of our most-read pieces this year, bringing in new subscribers and sparking debate about whether the mass luxury boom of the past two decades had finally run aground.

Three months later, some of Pierre’s calls look far-sighted, especially on LVMH. But not everyone agrees. On 1 July, Goldman Sachs analyst Louise Singlehurst added LVMH to its European Conviction List, telling investors to “look through Q2 softness” and predicted roughly 69 per cent upside against just 5 per cent downside.

Pierre is unimpressed by this sort of consensus research. “Take Bain,” he says. “Claudia D’Arpizio is smart and has followed the industry for years. But these reports are really business development for consulting firms. They don’t want to alienate clients, so the outlook ends up hedged to death. Luxury might go up a little, might go down a little. It’s meaningless.”

He says what bothers him most is that they miss the big points while restating the obvious. “Their last report said the Middle East is strong for luxury but tied to oil prices. Sure, but if you look at production data, that’s not a near-term issue. They just missed it.” For Pierre, the lesson is clear: “These reports should come with a disclaimer: they’re marketing, not analysis. Pretending otherwise is irresponsible.”

Straightforward observations carry more weight, he says. “Luxury is fascinating because it sits in that grey area. It’s technically consumer discretionary — no one needs it — but when it’s marketed properly, people are convinced that they do. Dior’s book tote was a perfect example. At first it was mocked as too big, too loud, too obvious. Then it was everywhere: at the beach, by the pool, carried casually. Suddenly everyone wanted one. That aspirational dynamic is what makes luxury such an interesting space to invest in.”

Other sectors, he says, are harder to read. “In tech or healthcare, you can do diligence, know the company has almost nothing, and still watch the stock go up. Luxury is different. You can see the product, track demand, and build a picture that’s tangible.”

LVMH shares have fallen about 30 per cent in the past year, and the market remains divided. That made it the right moment to check back in with Intern Pierre. This time, he isn’t just highlighting risks, he is laying out the opportunities. So let’s take a look inside Intern Pierre’s portfolio.

Editor’s note: The views below are Intern Pierre’s own. Dark Luxury publishes them for informational purposes only — they are not investment advice.

Kering: A Contrarian Long

Since Alessandro Michele’s exit, Kering has suffered one of corporate luxury’s steepest ever falls. In Q1 2025, Gucci’s revenue dropped to €1.57 billion, down 25 per cent year on year, pulling group sales to €3.9 billion, a 14 per cent decline. By mid-year, revenue was €7.6 billion, down 16 per cent.

Pierre’s long bet on Kering has already returned more than 30 per cent, and the new CEO Luca De Meo, an automotive veteran who revived Seat and Renault, has been key. On paper, putting a car executive in charge of Gucci looks odd, but Pierre interviewed former colleagues of de Meo and liked what he heard.

“One of the things that came through in my conversations is that he’s very good at understanding what he doesn’t know and bringing in the right people to address that. Normally I’d question bringing in a guy from automotive, but the way he delegates and manages things is materially different than a lot of other people.”

He contrasts that with the usual C-suite approach: “Other CEOs will say, ‘Okay, we’re going to hire Bain or McKinsey or BCG, they’ll spend six months figuring it out, and then you’ve got some 26-year-old MBA giving you a map of where to fix stuff.’”

For Pierre, de Meo’s fast, informed decision-making is exactly what Kering needs to navigate the Gucci crisis. Demna Gvasalia has been brought in to replace the disastrous Sabato De Sarno, with a make-or-break Gucci debut due in September.

“I think the way he’s going to handle this is going to be interesting,” Pierre says. “He seems to make decisions very quickly — obviously informed and calculated, but quick. So it’ll be interesting to pay attention to those first few quarters.”

Hermès: Best in Breed

Hermès trades at about 45x earnings, with operating margins above 40 per cent. Shares are up roughly 29 per cent over the past year, a steady performance, that at one point in April saw its market cap briefly exceed that of the much larger LVMH.

“I’ve always liked that company. I’ve been long for a while. Still am. It hasn’t shot the lights out over the past year, but it’s a very good company. There’s still very strong demand for it,” Pierre says. For him, Hermès is the definition of “best in breed”.

What keeps it special is its unique savoire faire, based around charm, gentility, loyalty, discretion and scarcity. Executives openly criticise resellers, saying that it spoils the bond with real customers: “They don’t want someone coming in, getting a Birkin, and just flipping it. It’s like the art world — you build a relationship, you’re not flipping. Hermès has managed that balance really well.”

The family still owns a big stake. That’s important, Pierre notes, because it keeps this slower, gentler culture intact. And compared to sprawling conglomerates like LVMH, Hermès stays disciplined. “When you become too big—and you’ve seen it—you start taking risks on design or businesses you don’t know. That’s when cracks appear. Hermès has avoided that by sticking to what works.”

Pierre’s latest ideas go beyond the obvious. Behind the paywall, he reveals:

• The luxury-adjacent stock that’s doubled in two years — and why he still thinks it belongs in a luxury portfolio.

• His candid reassessment of Burberry, after one of our most-read calls of last year.

• The American icon he missed — and what that says about staying disciplined in luxury.

• The Hermès adjacent performer built on “humanistic capitalism”.

• Plus: why Pierre is holding back his fresh short ideas for September — and what that signals about the market ahead.

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The smell doesn’t hit you at first, but you know it’s coming. I’m on a farm, part of which has been converted into the first new tannery in the UK for a century. In the rural East Midlands, Jack Millington, a former marketer turned micro-tanner (and Dark Luxury reader), is working on the hides of deer slaughtered at Windsor Great Park. The meat had always gone to the Windsor Farm Shop, but until Millington came along, the skins were being thrown away.

Millington has just shown me the unhairing of the hides, one of the most pungent parts of the process. After the hair is cut off, the skins slosh around a giant wooden barrel in a lime solution, releasing a sulphurous smell. “The tanning process starts off pretty gruesome and then it starts to become more like leather”, Millington says, as he opens the barrel to extract a sodden, jellyfish-like skin.

“It wasn’t the plan, that’s for sure”, Millington says of his career path. Growing up on his father’s farm, he was the son who wanted nothing to do with it. In his twenties he worked in creative agencies in London, discovering much later that he had an itch to do something more practical. One of the things that tipped him over the edge was a discovery about the skins of his father’s goats, which he was breeding to supply meat to Leicester's Indian population. “I naively was like, ‘Oh well, Dad’s got loads of different animals on the farm, most of which are going off into the food chain.’ So surely the hides and skins are being used for leather”.

They weren’t. All the goatskins from his father’s herd were being burned.

That was the impetus for him and childhood friend Rory Harker to launch a Kickstarter in 2017 to start a tannery. The tannery still works with goatskins, but it has since expanded to deer skins from Balmoral, Windsor and the Knepp rewilding estate in West Sussex. He sells products including tote bags, glasses cases and journals made from the skin of deer that lived on that estate. One of Millington’s favourite stories is that Billy Tannery supplied the leather for the coin pouches the King handed out at last year’s Maundy Thursday Easter service, using skins from Windsor estate deer.

How did economist Thorstein Veblen, who despised the waste produced by elites, become a mascot to justify half a million dollar handbags? Paid subscribers can read our interview with an academic who explains $450,000 bags:

Billy Tannery makes about 10,000 square feet of leather a year, which is what an Italian tannery might produce in a week, in an industry worth over $500 billion globally. Britain once had 300 tanneries, but today fewer than two dozen remain, dominated by Scotland’s Scottish Leather Group. Billy Tannery’s small scale and intimacy means Millington can keep an eye on almost every part of the process. “I’ve been to pretty much all of the places where we source the skins,” he says.

This supply chain is the opposite of how most of the world’s leather is made. In the global trade, hides can pass through many hands and travel thousands of miles before reaching a tannery, with each step often obscuring where the animal came from or how it was raised. It’s in that distance between origin and finished handbag that the industry’s biggest environmental and ethical problems take root.

An Earthsight investigation this year linked leather from brands including Coach, Fendi, Chloé, Hugo Boss, Chanel, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent and Gucci to illegal cattle ranching in Brazil’s Amazon. A Brazilian tannery in their supply chain was found to be sourcing from a meat packer accused of buying cattle from illegally deforested land. Many brands claim to ban Brazilian leather, but some rely on supplier assurances rather than verifiable traceability.

How the battle between LVMH and Hermès played out on the arm of one of the world’s top luxury analysts:

Waste is another problem. Perfection is prized in this business and brands can reject numerous hides for even minor blemishes, waste that rarely appears in glossy sustainability reports. At one Louis Vuitton plant in Texas, Reuters discovered that as much as 40 per cent of hides were discarded over workmanship issues.

Avoiding waste is a central part of Billy Tannery’s mission. His approach is to work with marks and scars rather than cut around them, seeing them as part of the material’s history. “Even with our own workshops, who we know really well, we ask, ‘Why did you cut around that?’ And they say, ‘Because it’s a mark’. And we say we want you to use the whole thing. People are looking for defects”.

For Millington, the answer to leather’s problems lies in changing how it is sourced and used, not replacing it with materials that create different harms. Most “vegan leather” is plastic-based, fossil fuel-derived and sheds microplastics throughout its life. While sometimes marketed as cruelty-free, these materials are not biodegradable and many fall apart within a few years, persisting in landfill for centuries. Truly low-impact alternatives from mycelium to plant fibres remain niche, expensive and often reliant on synthetic binders.

Read the rest of the story at BRiMM

Now read this interview with Eugene Rabkin, who says, “Hermès is the number one brand right now because it caters to adults”:

The implosion of Gucci, ongoing labour scandals at Loro Piana, Armani and Dior, the plummeting share price of LVMH and Kering, the rise of dupes, and the increasing sophistication and social acceptability of fakes. Now, it wouldn’t be in Eugene Rabkin’s nature to say, “I told you so”, but he would be entirely within his rights to do so. For the last 20 years, Rabkin’s op-eds and essays have examined and challenged industry norms as he emerged as one of the most critical, unbiased and influential voices in the industry. First, with his Style Zeitgeist magazine, which he founded in 2006, and then subsequent work in the Financial Times, Airmail, Highsnobiety and The Business of Fashion.

Dark Luxury first met the fashion critic, academic and cultural commentator in Florence in January this year, when he very kindly helped me make sense of the Pitti Uomo menswear trade fair. The intervening eight months have been some of the most tumultuous and consequential the luxury goods industry has ever seen, beset by multiple crises. Since then, Rabkin has joined Substack, so we took the opportunity to catch up with him during the quieter summer period to take stock of the state of play in fashion and luxury in 2025.

“The biggest lie that luxury brands currently tell is that they still produce luxury products”, Rabkin said over Zoom. He is, of course, referring to what is essentially branded merch — sweatshirts, T-shirts, and trainers — that can be found in much of the offer at Louis Vuitton, Dior Homme and Balenciaga, often made cheaply and sold for huge margins. “Another big lie is that they cater to the elite. Dior is a mass-market brand masquerading as a luxury brand”. Bain & Company recently produced research suggesting that 75 per cent of luxury purchases are made by “aspirational customers” whose average spend was around $2,000 or less per year, “which is around the same price as a Neverfull or Speedy bag from Louis Vuitton”, says Rabkin.

Mimma Viglezio takes us inside Bernard Arnault’s business empire and tells us why she left for Kering, one of the most senior people ever to defect from LVMH to its arch-rival. Paid subscribers can read our two-part interview series:

The third big lie is that they are somehow “cultural brands”. Of course, artists and fashion designers have a long history of collaborating with one another, a tradition going all the way back to Salvador Dalí and Elsa Schiaparelli’s “lobster dress” in 1937. More recently, Marc Jacobs struck commercial gold with Stephen Sprouse and Takashi Murakami and their leather goods collaborations of the early 2000s, recently revived for 2025. “That was a meeting of creative minds”, said Rabkin. “They were initiated by him (Marc Jacobs), the creative director, who came to an artist and said, ‘Look, I really admire your work. Do you think we can do something?’”

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