Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen and Brioni all parted ways with the people designing them this month, with reported change also afoot at Balenciaga. New CEO Luca de Meo is not hiding the logic: a group built on betting everything on one designer's vision is a group with too many ways to lose. [1]
Days earlier, LVMH told the market the same story from the other side. Third-quarter growth came in at one percent. Fashion and leather goods, the engine, fell five percent. China, which was supposed to carry the rebound two seasons ago, is dragging instead. [2]
Neither company is going anywhere. But the shape of the moment matters for smaller European brands watching from outside. If the strongest houses in the world are re-pricing, re-positioning and re-organizing, the assumptions underneath them are up for grabs too.
For decades the luxury playbook ran on brand equity. Build the name, and the name opens the market. That playbook produced extraordinary companies. It also produced a generation of brands that never had to learn how a market actually works, because the story did the work for them.
The US has never been kind to that assumption. American buyers, whether they sit in a department store or a boutique in SoHo, ask different questions. What does it cost landed? Who services the account? What does the customer hear when no one from the brand is in the room?
That is what makes this re-set worth watching beyond the big houses. The heritage houses will be watched for how they re-price and re-position. The smaller European makers will be watched for something else: whether they understand that their opening is real.
A re-set at the top of the market moves shelf space, buyer attention and price expectations all the way down. The brands that benefit are rarely the ones with the best story. They are the ones who did the unglamorous work early - distribution that answers the phone, pricing that survives a freight shock, a presence that does not depend on one person's vision.
Brand equity alone does not travel across the Atlantic. It never did. The difference now is that the companies proving it are the biggest names in the business.
Sources
- 1. The Business of Fashion, "Luca de Meo's Creative Gamble at Kering", 17 October 2026
- 2. WWD, LVMH third-quarter 2026 results
A gold and diamond ring in a single shaft of light. Photo: Pexels.