After years of rising prices, especially during the post-pandemic boom which drove luxury growth in 2022/23, consumers are also adopting cost-conscious behaviour. According to HSBC, luxury prices today are more than 50% higher than before Covid. Key styles are even more expensive. An example of this is Louis Vuitton’s Speedy bag, which has doubled in price. Consumers see this as greed on the part of luxury brands and are switching off or finding more affordable alternatives. This is fuelling growth where consumers see value for money, largely in resale and off-price items. Smaller brands that offer consumers high value are also benefiting. Swedish label Our Legacy is a case in point.

Vogue Business said: “Our Legacy was founded in 2005 in Stockholm by friends Jockum Hallin, Christopher Nying and Richardos Klarén. The brand has boomed in the past three years, thanks to a growing community of fans across the US, Korea, the UK and beyond. Sales have grown 80% year-on-year since 2021, reaching €30m in [the 2023 financial year to end-June] according to the brand.”

LVMH Luxury Ventures recently acquired a minority stake in Our Legacy, something seen by industry observers as quite significant at a time when high-end brands are struggling to keep up with a market that is changing at a rate that many cannot keep up with. Brands like Our Legacy are benefiting from eschewing trends, and building a cult-like following of consumers who appreciate high-quality clothing at affordable luxury price points.

The luxury slowdown that is likely to continue into 2025 probably signals fatigue with high-end, high-visibility brands that don’t seem to offer consumers much beyond a legacy brand name, at increasingly unjustifiable prices. While “going back to basics” might prove beneficial for the likes of Burberry, something tells me it might take much more than that to get consumers back on board.