Img
The Chief Fashion Officer: Luxury News, Read Through the Balance Sheet
  • Get Social with us
  • img
img
  • Fashion Office
  • Capital Couture
  • Beauty Capital
  • The Weekly Brief
  • The Buy Side
  • About
  • Contact

Beauty as luxury's scalable engine: fragrance, make-up, licensing, margins and brand extension.

  • Beauty Capital
    Beauty Is the New It-Bag: How make-up became Luxury’s most profitable illusion.

    Image credit: Dior With handbags now past €5,000, luxury has quietly priced out its own believers. The entry ticket to...

imgTheCFODiary

The queue doesn’t lie : How Chanel Built Blazymani The queue doesn’t lie : How Chanel Built Blazymania Before Blazy

From London to Dubai, the queues looked the same: infinite. A scene the industry had quietly filed away as a relic of the post-Covid boom.

People queued up to five hours for $5,000 to $15,000 pieces. In Paris they took shoes a size too big just to own one. This is not the price-sensitive market most people diagnosed.

It is a flight to quality. The consumer is not buying luxury anymore. They are buying certainty.

In 2024, Chanel let operating profit fall 30 percent and refused to cut. It bought French ateliers, opened more than 40 boutiques, raised capex 43 percent to a record $1.8bn, and poured $724m into craft, rebuilding the product people stopped paying for after the price inflation.

The bet is starting to pay. Chanel posted +3 percent revenue growth to $19.3bn and free cash flow up 44 percent in 2025, before the full Blazy frenzy even hit the P&L.

It happens for belief, not just for a bag!
Image courtesy : Chanel
Le Smoking turns 60!! Saint Laurent has the deepes Le Smoking turns 60!!
Saint Laurent has the deepest and most powerful archive in luxury. One runway moment to mark it.

Meanwhile Dior has a global touring retrospective and an exhibition with YSL’s own pieces on its walls. Dior is telling part of Saint Laurent’s story. For free.

Saint Laurent is the hottest brand in fashion. 
It is also Kering’s highest-margin large house  20% operating margin, nearly double the group average.

Desirability is not the problem.

~75% of hero bags carry the Cassandre logo. The richest archive in luxury, the least activated. And ~75% of the handbag line sits in the €500–3,000 range, the exact sweet spot to reconquer the aspirational customer. The customers coming back are buying substance over signal.

The only question: does the archive stay on the balance sheet or move to the income statement?

Full analysis on The CFO Diary. Link in bio.
One week in Paris, two Luxury summits and one good One week in Paris, two Luxury summits and one good news for the Luxury industry and investors : Appetite for Luxury is strong !The queues are back.
The less good news: ReconKering will be harder than conquering .
One data point from Claudia D’Arpizio from Bain & Company that confirmed the excitement for Luxury is that from the 70 mios consumers who exited the market, 70% are planning to return !
50 millions people standing at the edge of the market with no trust and zero tolerance.
The houses that earn back the right to ask for the money again are the ones that restore the Luxury contract broken by years of greedflation!
Full analysis on CFO diary. Link in comment
@voguebusiness @financialtimesfashion @financialtimes 
#voguebusiness#ft#luxury#finance.
To my fellow AP owner , don’t worry the Oak will a To my fellow AP owner , don’t worry the Oak will always be Royal!!!
The watch world is debating whether AP is diluting the Royal Oak with the Royal Pop.
They are missing the bigger story.
In March 2024, Japan ruled the octagonal Royal Oak shape isn’t legally distinctive.
In January 2025, the US said the same.
Two of the largest watch markets told AP: the octogonal shape is not distinctive enough to be protected!
Swatch filed the “Royal Pop” trademark in Switzerland two months BEFORE the Japan ruling, and in the US six months BEFORE the US verdict.
This wasn’t reactive damage control. It was a coordinated commercial response.
When the courts won’t defend your design, you choose who gets to copy it. AP chose Swatch. The most disciplined IP risk move in luxury watchmaking this decade.
Full piece on The CFO Diary. Link in bio.
Clever risk management or quiet dilution? 👇​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Luxury is no longer only selling products. It is Luxury is no longer only selling products. 
It is selling access, emotion, private clubs, hospitality, and belonging.

Diafa’s $1.4bn bet on Richard Caring’s empire is not just a restaurant deal. It is a signal that the next luxury asset class may be experience itself.
While the industry spent years chasing volume and price increases, Gulf capital is quietly investing in something harder to replicate: cultural ecosystems with recurring emotional value.
The question is no longer “Who owns the bag?” 
It is “Who owns the room everyone wants to enter?”

New article on The CFO Diary. Link in bio
“The Experience Yield: Why Diafa’s $1.4bn Bet Signals Luxury’s Next Asset Class.”#
The Luxury industry still hasn’t understood its co The Luxury industry still hasn’t understood its core problem.
Milan Design Week exposed luxury’s core mistake: answering fatigue with more visibility.
Fashion houses were everywhere ,Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada ,turning design week into an extension of fashion week. Installations, objects, cafés, exhibitions.

The issue is not that brands should stay away from design. The best activations show that craft, interiors and culture can deepen a maison’s authority. But when every house wants to be everywhere, cultural expansion starts to blur into saturation.

According to Bain & Company, luxury lost ~50 million customers between 2022 and 2024. The aspirational base did not simply disappear; it disconnected. Many consumers have shifted toward mid-luxury, travel, wellness, resale, and increasingly, the dupe culture spreading across social media.

Luxury does not need more noise. It needs restraint. Less expansion, more precision.
The problem isn’t visibility. It’s value.
footer logo The Chief Fashion Officer: Luxury News, Read Through the Balance Sheet
explore by category
  • Fashion Office
  • Capital Couture
  • Beauty Capital
  • The Weekly Brief
  • The Buy Side
Quick Links
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
lets connect
  • kahina@thecfodiary.com
  • instagram
  • © - CFODiary
  • All rights reserved

Designed & Developed by Tequila.ae