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In the middle of Haute Couture Week, an infographic tracking luxury spending surfaced in my Instagram feed. The post, from boutique consulting firm Matter, noted that spending across numerous categories declined last year, including cars (down 4 percent), fine art (7 percent), personal luxury goods (2 percent), etcetera. None of that seemed crazy, given the downturn in sales of soft goods. What caught my eye, though, was the increase in luxury experiences: Ozempic-era dining (up 7 percent), private jetting (11 percent), and even cruises (12 percent). Marketers have been threatening this change for a decade—the result of numerous, probably obvious factors, from the rise of the secondhand market to the fact that we need less in an increasingly virtual world. However, this fundamental change in how consumers operate seems to have finally settled in.

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It’s possible to see this play out at the top of the industry. LVMH’s stock dipped 7 percent the day after the company posted fourth-quarter earnings—not a sign of confidence that soft luxury is going to bounce back, even though it’s obviously not the end of the world for a conglomerate whose best-performing brands will continue to throw off billions. And yet, while fashion and leather goods will continue to sell, there’s a growing feeling that the pace at which the business accelerated over the past 20 years was unsustainable. We might be at the end of the consolidation cycle, which means managing near-inevitable decline in the not-so-distant future. “It’s so over,” as one executive lamented to me this week.

I was thinking about this a lot during the Couture shows, which are the purest form of fashion. How could all this materialize on the runway? After all, couture serves two purposes: to market the dream of fashion, but also to sell actual clothes. This means couture needs to wow, but it also needs to be wearable, appealing to the clients who might order these $300,000 pieces straight away.

From left: Couture looks from Dior, Chanel, Dior, and Chanel.

I could see designers wrestling with the often-incongruent demands of these collections, and none more so than Jonathan Anderson at Dior and Matthieu Blazy at Chanel. Anderson, as I’ve noted, entered into the more difficult situation at Dior. He’s designing more, navigating more complex office politics, and working for the lesser house with fewer universally recognized brand codes. This was the best thing he’s delivered there to date: It managed to pack all of his ideas, alongside many significant notes from Dior’s history, into one moment without it feeling overwhelming or confusing. And while I don’t think things are going to become easier for Anderson anytime soon, it showed that he does have the ability to actually make Dior… One Dior. It also photographed incredibly well, which made it easy for the internet to chew over.

Hopefully, it also helped crystallize Dior’s red carpet strategy, which has never been super clear but actually became even murkier upon Anderson’s arrival. (Many of these dresses are Oscars-worthy.) I heard from those who attended shopping appointments that there was even more available to clients with less adventurous tastes: about 40 additional looks on top of the 60-plus shown on the runway. By Wednesday night, there were fewer than a dozen available left to purchase from the U.S. region’s allotment.

I could imagine someone wearing every one of Blazy’s pieces from his first Couture runway. But perhaps that worked against him when it came to the marketing. As with his Métiers d’art show last month in a Manhattan subway, the soft lighting at Couture did not translate well to the web. And the subtleness of each piece, combined with the daywear emphasis—a reflection of the way we live now—threw many commenters off. I can understand why attendees have been screaming in their Stories about how great Chanel was in person; there was a sensitivity and mastery that you could only detect if you were there. (What was obvious online was the greatness of the curvy, two-tone pumps; one friend messaged to say she dreamt about them. My understanding is that, in the past, shoes from the Couture show were never made. But I suspect we will be able to access some version of these in real life.)

When it comes down to it, couture is a proposal of what a brand should be—and how a client should look. That manifests differently at smaller houses, where there are more constraints around what they can achieve, especially from a marketing perspective. At Schiaparelli, I was happy to see Daniel Roseberry’s strange couture delights in person for the first time. It feels mega being in that room. He is doing something particular, which a set of women love. Though I sometimes wonder what he is like as a designer when he strips away the surrealism that is so germane to the house, and also to his own body of work.

From left: Couture looks from Armani, Julie de Libran, Valentino, and Schiaparelli.

At Julie de Libran, where the designer showed in her friend’s apartment, there was no doubt who would wear the clothes: said friend. I was gone before Alessandro Michele’s Valentino show; the pictures looked hyper-nostalgic, but also flashy and fun, just like him.

Perhaps it was the team at Armani—where the late Giorgio Armani’s niece, Silvana Armani, took the final bow this season—who truly understood the couture assignment. Like Blazy, Silvana proposed plenty of trousers; nothing too fussy, just incredibly elegant, which is exactly what Armani should be. Luxury might be going down, but we’re all going down with it.

Just a reminder that I broke the news about Sydney Sweeney’s lingerie line more than six months ago (July 9). All the details were correct. The name is dumb. I do the work for you! [Syrn]

Mona Fastvold is directing the latest Miu Miu Women’s Tales movie, which will premiere at the Angelika in New York on February 12. [WWD]

I told you… peptides! [N.Y. Mag]

Cutie and (seemingly) great boyfriend A$AP Rocky is on the cover of Esquire wearing Chanel, styled by Matthew Henson. [Instagram]

Simon, the mall developer, is trying to terminate Saks Global’s leases at Woodbury Common (a Saks Off Fifth) and Stanford Shopping Center (the Neiman Marcus). [CoStar]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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