When it comes to purchasing a beauty product with a triple — or quadruple — digit price tag, luxury consumers tend to have a critical eye.

“I want to see the research and know that the ingredients are unique, special and really active,” said Lacey Buteyn, a 46-year-old private wealth manager and yoga teacher based in Dallas, Texas. Other requirements include beautiful packaging and white-glove service, and of course, the products must also feel and smell good, she added.

Buteyn spends about $1,000 a month on beauty products, and her top brands include Sisley, Natura Bisse and Westman Atelier. Glimmering on her bathroom countertop are La Prairie Pure Gold Radiance Cream, $935, and Clé de Peau’s Beauté La Crème, $810.

She’s part of a small but high-spending cohort who are more likely to do their beauty shopping in boutique retailers and rarefied department stores than in Sephora or Ulta Beauty. Buteyn’s favourite retailer is Cos Bar, which has a store conveniently located above her vacation apartment in Aspen, Colorado.

Customers like her rarely get sticker shock — a contrast from the aspirational shoppers who have pulled back from luxury spending in recent seasons. For instance, L’Oréal and Shiseido both saw a slowdown in the US for their prestige offerings in second-quarter earnings, while LVMH’s perfume and cosmetics division grew but missed expectations. Unilever also noted softness for its prestige unit in its recent earnings results.

To make up for weak prestige sales, a category with products typically priced under $100, some beauty companies are now investing in more premium products in a bid to go after wealthy customers whose purchase behaviour has not been hampered by inflation or other macroeconomic uncertainties.

In July, Puig-owned Paco Rabanne announced the launch of a fine fragrance line separate from its widely distributed masstige offering. Similar moves are underway at L’Oréal and Interparfums. Nivea-owner Beiersdorf is seeking to revive its pricier lines like Chantecaille, and Estée Lauder-owned Tom Ford now offers private beauty shopping events for American Express Platinum card holders that pay upwards of $800 a year for membership.

But in order to justify an eyebrow-raising price tag, these beauty brands must demonstrate a strong value proposition and provide exceptional customer service. In other words, shoppers need to feel that their products are worth it.

“Even if you have unlimited money, people still want value,” said Oliver Garfield, chief executive of Cos Bar.

Building a Value Proposition

It’s not always about the contents inside a bottle; the most successful luxury beauty brands are able to create an image and overall sense of refinement.

For Louise de Turckheim, who runs the London-based PR consultancy LDT Luxury Communications, one of the most important attributes of the expensive products she opts for is how they look.

Some expensive products seem as if they’ll shatter if rolled off a shelf, while others have packaging that “feels a bit cheap,” said de Turckheim, pointing to Dr. Barbara Sturm as an example.

De Turckheim uses four Augustinus Bader products “religiously” — a cleansing balm, eye cream, foam cleanser and its signature moisturiser, The Cream, which cost over $670 altogether. She’s also a fan of Guerlain’s premier Orchidée Imperiale range, including the cream and essence, $525 and $155 respectively.

Other luxury consumers want to feel a strong personal connection to the creator of the brand or see rigour in a brand’s scientific research.

For Sam Yashari, a content creator based in Adelaide, Australia, it’s about originality. He doesn’t shop for luxury fashion or cars, but he has spent $820 AUD ($552) on a Chanel skincare product.

“It’s about the sourcing and storyline of their unique ingredients,” he said, “It’s about the fragrance and the unique packaging and also just heritage.”

A Luxury Environment

Even brands that craft a strong story and identity can stumble when they enter new retail environments through wholesale partners.

Annalise Fard, who oversees the high-end London retailer Harrods’ beauty, jewellery and watches departments, said the most successful brands are those that invest in education and staffing.

Sales associates must be able to convey the value of pricey labels in a way that resonates with shoppers. “The brands that are winning are those with great field teams,” said Garfield of Cos Bar. Once a shopper makes a purchase, the retailer encourages its employees to stay in touch, reaching out post-purchase to suggest top-ups through a clienteling software called Salesfloor.

In Harrods, shoppers can learn about products on the sales floor with associates, but also attend workshops, masterclasses and receive branded facials or spa treatments in a dedicated space.

Small touches can make a big difference in purchase satisfaction, including something as simple as small free samples.

Carving out space in the right retailers, investing in training, education and sampling and building out customer relationships are long term strategic shifts that require capital and time to pay off, but the upside potential is high: in 2023, Sisley broke the $1 billion sales threshold.

For upscale beauty retailer Violet Grey, which is often credited with kick-starting the Augustinus Bader brand, it’s ultimately about surprise and delight, and giving customers more than they expect, according to founder Cassandra Grey.

How the products are merchandised matters and even the lighting and scent inside a store can make a difference. And when it all clicks for the shoppers, “it’s like magic,” she said.

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When “Emily in Paris” debuted on Netflix in October 2020, it was instantly deemed clichéd and reductive by critics.

The comedy series has an outlandish premise: An American ingénue from Chicago, played by Lily Collins, moves to Paris for a job in marketing. Barely speaking the language and clad in over-the-top couture, the titular Emily manages to charm a long list of lovers and clients through various shenanigans.

Three seasons later, and she has charmed everyone else on the other side of the screen. The show has proven to be a sleeper hit: Its latest season, which premiered in December 2022, garnered over 117 million viewership hours, making it the second-most watched English-language TV show in over 90 countries, according to data from Netflix. (The most watched series is “Wednesday,” Netflix’s adaptation of The Addams Family.)

Brands have noticed the potential. Under showrunner Darren Star and costume designer Marylin Fitoussi, a number of luxury labels have made it into the show, including Chopard, Ami Paris and LVMH-owned Rimowa. Site traffic to Rimowa’s website surged following its feature in season two, Emelie De Vitis, Rimowa’s senior vice president of product and marketing, told Rolling Stone in 2022.

It’s no wonder then that when Netflix approached Vestiaire Collective with a storyline and an offer for a paid product placement last year, the resale platform jumped at the opportunity.

In the first episode of the show’s fourth season, which premieres on Thursday, Vestiaire Collective comes up in the storyline of Mindy Chen, played by Ashley Park, Emily’s cash-strapped heiress-turned-singer friend who needs to raise funds for her Eurovision performance. Mindy turns to the platform to sell her designer clothes, and Vestiaire Collective ultimately sells a couture dress on her behalf.

The “Emily in Paris” cameo is part of Vestiaire Collective’s wider strategy to grow its US business, which makes up for 20 percent of its sales. The new season drops at a time when consumers are pulling back from spending, particularly in the luxury sector. This poses an opportunity for resale sites like Vestiaire Collective to convey value to price-conscious shoppers as well as people looking to monetise their closets, said Samina Virk, Vestiaire Collective’s chief executive of its North American arm.

“In a state where the economy is challenging and people are being smarter with their money, secondhand fashion really comes into play,” said Virk.

As part of its expansion playbook, the reseller has partnered with e-tailers such as Mytheresa and LuisaViaRoma, which is also expanding its US business.

But competition is fierce. Currently, the largest online resale players in the US market are eBay, Poshmark and Whatnot, a video-based shopping marketplace, according to analysis from Earnest Research. The data examines all online resale transactions, not only fashion. EBay, which sells everything from vintage couture to kitchen appliances, accounted for 70 percent of the market in the second quarter of 2024. Vestiaire Collective came in at 0.01 percent of market share, behind The RealReal’s 1.8 percent, Poshmark’s 7 percent, ThredUp’s 1.5 percent and Depop’s 3 percent of the overall online resale market.

Vestiaire is betting that its diversified marketing and distribution strategy, as well as increased commission rates for sellers, will allow it to break through in the crowded landscape.

“We feel there’s a lot of opportunity and untapped potential in the US,” said Virk.

A Leg Up on Supply

One of Vestiaire Collective’s biggest objectives this year is to grow the number of sellers on the platform. In the online secondhand market, the matter of supply via sellers is just as competitive as acquiring buyers.

In “Emily in Paris,” Ashley Park’s character Mindy visits a Vestiaire Collective authentication site with a couture dress she is eager to sell off. A consultant for the company meets with her and gives her an estimated payout price of €3,000 ($3,303) before the garment is authenticated — showcasing Vestiaire’s white-glove consignment service. In a matter of minutes, she receives a payment larger than she was quoted.

As part of the “Emily in Paris” push, starting Thursday, the company removed all seller fees and is offering first-time listers on the platform a $50 credit to shop pre-owned garments on Vestiaire Collective’s website.

The US, as a singular luxury market, presents Vestiaire Collective with a unique opportunity to grow its business and reach profitability ahead of its potential IPO. Global CEO Max Bittner has relocated to the US and the company’s US personnel, including its marketing team, has grown significantly, according to Virk.

Joining the Cultural Conversation

Vestiaire Collective’s marketing push won’t stop at “Emily in Paris.”

The resale platform has planned a series of branding activations slated for this autumn as part of its Parlez-Vous Vestiaire Collective campaign, which launched in the spring on social media. The campaign aims to highlight the convenience of selling on the platform and will include a series of closet sales by celebrities. Earlier this year, it enlisted actresses Jessica Chastain and Laura Dern to sell off their pre-owned garments.

Other closet sale collaborators include influencer and former Sartorialist fashion director Jenny Walton; Vogue editor Lilah Ramzi; and model Karen Elson. As part of its partnership with Netflix, Vestiaire will also curate closet sales for the show’s characters including Emily, Mindy and Camille (played by Camille Razat), selecting items from its international pool of sellers that exemplify their eclectic styles.

“We want to drive home the message that on our site you can access and shop the best closets,” said Virk.

Before Luke Fracher opened Luke’s, a resale business focused on used luxury and high-fashion menswear, in 2022, he was the co-owner of Round Two, which at its peak in the late-2010s was a mainstay of the resale market for hyped streetwear. The customers Fracher served back then are still buying from Luke’s today, except now, instead of exclusively buying Supreme, they’re more inclined to mix in Balenciaga, Rick Owens, Vetements or Louis Vuitton apparel by Pharrell or Virgil Abloh.

“The average consumer is just more educated now and has a better sense of self,” said Fracher, who just opened Luke’s second outpost in Los Angeles this month. “They used to come in and just buy a random $100 Supreme or BAPE tee. Now, people want certain items to complete their fit and are not grabbing stuff for the sake of grabbing it anymore.”

Despite the narrative to the contrary, streetwear isn’t dead and young consumers are not casting aside their sneaker rotation for a wardrobe full of loafers. While the market for brands like Supreme, Off-White and Palace has cooled, it’s still moving. What’s changed is the streetwear shopper is no longer a monolithic, head-to-toe brand loyalist. Instead, retailers and other experts say the young consumers who might have only bought graphic T-shirts and hoodies a few years ago are embracing a diverse wardrobe that mixes streetwear, heritage brands and traditional menswear or luxury.

“There’s a venn diagram between the customers for Wales Bonner-Adidas, Supreme and Bottega [Veneta],” said Jian DeLeon, Nordstrom’s men’s fashion director who was formerly the editorial director of the youth culture magazine Highsnobiety. “They might aspire to buy one special piece from Bottega but are going to wear it with Carhartt pants and a graphic T-shirt from Pleasures or Supreme.”

At the multi-brand Asian streetwear retailer Invincible, for example, brogues from Thom Browne are now sold alongside Hoka sneakers. Co-founder Michael Vincent said the shop still sells streetwear staples like Stüssy and Neighborhood, which Vincent describes as a stable legacy brand, but the same consumers who bought Off-White graphic T-shirts and Nike Dunks a couple years ago have moved on to more expansive tastes.

“Now the consumer is more picky,” he said. “It’s more centred on individual style, and sneakers are no longer that ‘it thing’ to complete your streetwear look.”

What Streetwear Shoppers Are Buying — Or Not

The changes are also affecting where streetwear shoppers are directing their money. Many are being more discerning amidst turbulent global markets and the looming threat of a recession. Customers who’ve bought from Supreme directly in the past spent 9.1 percent less at apparel, accessories and department-store chains in 2023 compared to the prior year, and 7.7 percent less in roughly the first six months of 2024, according to an analysis of credit card data by Earnest Analytics.

This general drop in spending doesn’t mean consumers aren’t buying streetwear brands anymore. StockX reported that Fear of God and Supreme were still the most-traded apparel brands on the platform during the first six months of 2024. However, the fastest-growing brands during that time included New York-based label Denim Tears, Gucci and Asics.

Drew Haines, StockX’s director of sneakers and collectibles, said even as Millennial and Gen-Z shoppers continue to pay above retail for labels like Fear of God and Supreme, bargain hunters are fuelling a growing trade for luxury brands, and interest is growing in sportswear challenger brands like On as well as heritage brands like Timberland as interest in Nike Air Jordan 1s and Dunks declines.

“Where youth culture goes, culture will go. Youth will always gravitate towards these types of products and the status that they carry with them,” Haines said.

One shift he has noticed is that, even though Nike is still the top sneaker brand on StockX, customers are moving beyond its hyped collaborations.

“They’re looking for something that isn’t just what everyone else has,” said Haines.

This collaboration fatigue also led Vincent to diversify Invincible’s store’s assortment in Jakarta, Indonesia, rather than conceiving hyped partnerships. He says that while his customers in Indonesia — the world’s largest Muslim-majority country — are hyper aware of global style trends, they are also showcasing individualism by styling hijabs with streetwear and contemporary clothing and value dressing differently more than wearing the week’s hottest drop.

“Instead of having five pairs of hype sneakers, the trendy ‘it girl’ is now wearing jorts, a pair of ballet flats and a Stüssy T-shirt,” Vincent said.

Same Culture, More Consumer Options

At its core, streetwear is a category that’s still defined by its connection to niche subcultures and communities. That cultural connection still exists today, just in a different form than it used to.

When Ross O’ Hanlon helped develop Dover Street Market New York’s T-shirt space in 2016, he witnessed how graphic T-shirts by brands like Cactus Plant Flea Market resonated with a wide audience intrigued by emerging brands with low-priced products. But today, he finds that the T-shirts, hoodies and hats that served as the original blank canvas for streetwear have been replaced by any product with a story behind it — the modus operandi of brands such as Denim Tears, which is centred on telling Black stories through clothing as much as Wales Bonner.

“Whether it’s the niche cultures around the clothing that they wear or the communities involved, it’s coming from a personal interest outside of the clothing itself,” said O’Hanlon, who now works as a senior buyer at streetwear retailer Concepts.

DeLeon pointed out that shoppers are still looking for small, independent brands putting out limited-edition products, only now that scarcity more often is a product of how the clothes are made. He pointed to brands like Drake’s, Stòffa and 18 East that pride themselves on craftsmanship that can’t be mass-produced.

That’s not to say brands trafficking in streetwear’s typical codes have faded away. StockX’s Haines noted that labels such as Sp5der and Hellstar are rising fast. And the names that defined the category are still around, including Supreme, even as it’s been bought and sold multiple times. Fracher of Luke’s said they continue to sell pieces from Supreme — especially older items — as well as Palace and Off-White.

Logoed apparel will continue to serve as a membership badge for the consumers who recognise it. The broader tastes of streetwear shoppers today just mean more competition and more variety.

“Back then, you only had Supreme and two other brands,” Vincent said. “Now, the streetwear consumer has options.”

Opportunistic credit firm Strategic Value Partners struck a deal to buy Blanchardstown Centre, Ireland’s largest shopping mall, from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The US investment bank offered the centre for sale last year, seeking about €650 million, Bloomberg News reported at the time. The selling price is lower than that, the people said, asking not to be identified because the transaction has yet to be completed.

A Goldman Sachs representative declined to comment. SVP, founded by Victor Khosla, also declined to comment. The firm has more than $18 billion of assets under management.

After a decade of being roiled by online shopping, malls are starting to become attractive to investors again because declines in rents in recent years have made space more affordable for retailers, meaning there’s less chance they’ll miss payments. Tenants have also been boosted by 14 consecutive quarters of rising consumer spending in Dublin, according to data compiled for the city’s local governments.

“Capital values for prime shopping centres in Europe have fallen more than 40 percent since the peak and rental values in the best malls are now increasing, so if yields stabilise there is value recovery potential,” Sue Munden, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said of the region’s retail properties in general.

Goldman Sachs, based in New York, acquired the mall from Blackstone Inc. in late 2020, when it was valued at about €750 million. The complex has 180 stores and restaurants, according to its website, and gets about 16 million visitors a year. Occupants include Zara, Hollister and JD Sports.

The Irish Times reported last month that SVP had made an offer to buy the property.

By Neil Callanan

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The US Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday finalised a ban on companies knowingly buying or selling fake online reviews, giving the agency the power to levy fines against the shadowy practice.

The ban covers trafficking in fake reviews, whether by non-existent customers, company insiders or artificial intelligence. It also prohibits buying and selling fabricated views or followers on social media, and using intimidation tactics to remove negative reviews.

The FTC can seek a maximum penalty of up to around $51,744 per violation.

“Fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money, but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors,” FTC chair Lina Khan said in a statement.

The rule does not require platforms that simply publish consumer reviews to verify their veracity.

Teresa Murray, a consumer advocate at US Public Interest Research Group, said the rule is an important protection for online shoppers, 90 percent of whom base purchase decisions in part on reviews.

“We hope this puts fear in companies so they do the right thing, even if it’s just because they’re afraid of the consequences,” Murray said.

By Jody Godoy in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis

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