European luxury fashion brands renew their focus on the American market

New York - From Gucci in the middle of Times Square to Chanel on a New York subway platform, Europe's most prestigious fashion houses are staging an increasing number of spectacular shows in the United States. The US is a market that is both a priority and a trendsetter.

Dior, which presented a collection with retro accents and American flag colours at the Brooklyn Museum in 2024, chose the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in mid-May for a cruise show paying homage to the golden age of Hollywood cinema.

On Wednesday, Louis Vuitton is taking over another museum, the Frick Collection in New York, for its own cruise show. This comes just a few days after launching a menswear collection inspired by the Big Apple.

The French house and the prestigious cultural institution have also announced a patronage partnership, featuring exhibitions and free evenings sponsored by Louis Vuitton.

Experts agree that all this demonstrates the renewed interest of luxury houses in the American market. “For several years, the Chinese market has seen significantly slower growth. The Middle Eastern market is also suffering,” observes Pierre-François Le Louët, president of the strategy consulting agency NellyRodi.

Despite the recent bankruptcy filing of the group that owns luxury department stores Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, “the American market (...) remains a safe haven” in a context of geopolitical and economic instability, adds Serge Carreira. Carreira is a professor at Sciences Po Paris and one of the directors of the French Fédération de la haute couture et de la mode.

In New York specifically, “turnover is high,” states Pierre-François Le Louët. With its frenetic pace of construction, the city regularly offers new spaces for luxury boutiques.

Embodying modernity

The challenge for major fashion houses, however, remains to reach the widest possible audience, continues Serge Carreira. Since the United States is “a very strong cultural reference point”, showing there allows them to deliver both “a specific local message” and have a resonance “on the global market”.

Images of Chanel models on the New York subway in December went viral, propelling two of them onto the steps of the Met Gala, the annual fashion and celebrity event, in early May. Images of former American football player Tom Brady and reality TV pioneer Paris Hilton walking for Gucci in Times Square on Saturday, watched by Kim Kardashian among others, went around the world.

Major European houses want to continue to “embody modernity”, and this also involves the celebrities present in the front rows of the shows, according to Pierre-François Le Louët.

Losing momentum compared to its European counterparts, New York Fashion Week, held in February and September, is the subject of a reform attempt planned for 2027.

“In the short term, one might get the impression that the Americans are being overtaken,” concedes Valerie Steele, curator of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. “However, competition is generally a good thing.”

These spectacular shows on their home turf “remind American brands of the immense prestige of European haute couture, and therefore, if they want to compete, they must make an extra effort or consider a different approach,” she says. Above all, “more broadly, it revives interest in fashion”.

This article was translated to English using an AI tool.

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Chanel

Louis Vuitton

Luxury

United States