What percentage of luxury shoppers watch fashion shows or know anything about the designers of their favourite labels?

[nationalsalt]

I was discussing with someone earlier how much of an impact fashion shows make outside of the immediate attendees and online devotees - do most luxury shoppers ever see them?

Furthermore, are the majority of them remotely aware of the comings and goings of designers at the top houses, their inspirations behind each collection etc? (beyond what an SA might tell them.)

When you're invested in an industry I find it's hard to gauge how much the wider public actually knows or cares about it, or if we're just in a bubble and they only care about buying name brands for the supposed higher quality / status symbol.

What do you think?

 

[visvim2001]

depends which brands you’re talking about. yohji, undercover, rick, ysl, maybe significant. tom ford, Armani, a handful. Louis, Gucci, Loewe, Dior…fat chance. most of their customers just watch their rubbish on TikTok and instagram.

 

[Lola701]

To know a percentage, we would need a real investigation with numbers.
But the majority of luxury shoppers don’t know about the designers and certainly don’t care.
There are exceptions though: Karl Lagerfeld, Tom Ford, John Galliano, Donatella Versace, Olivier Rousteing.
Obviously, the designers like Jean Paul Gaultier are very famous but I don’t think the mass knew about him at Hermes at the time.

But a lot of designers who have their namesake brands are also quite unknown.

But I have to say that I always make a point to separate a luxury customer to a fashion customer.
The person who buys the runway look or the commercial version of the runway look knows the designer and is sensible to the various changes of creative direction.
We saw it with Marni. A lot of their women’s customer just left.
There’s a little community of Fendi RTW customers (that I’m a part of) who stopped buying when Kim Jones took over.

When Alexander Wang took Balenciaga, a lot of customers left. However, the luxury customer, who was buying the bags, the sneakers, the motorcycle jackets and boots continued to buy them. He even got a hit with his sock sneakers.

As brands gains in popularity, they attracts luxury customers that are into the products and the cool factor and not so much about the house itself. It’s happening with Rick Owens, Thom Browne or CDG for example.

 

[LadyJunon]

depends which brands you’re talking about. yohji, undercover, rick, ysl, maybe significant. tom ford, Armani, a handful. Louis, Gucci, Loewe, Dior…fat chance. most of their customers just watch their rubbish on TikTok and instagram.

I would probably swap YSL and Loewe considering that the current cultures of the brands are very different.

 

[blueorchid]

I mean… do most car buyers know the history of the car makes they purchase? Why does it matter, broadly speaking?

 

[nationalsalt]

depends which brands you’re talking about. yohji, undercover, rick, ysl, maybe significant. tom ford, Armani, a handful. Louis, Gucci, Loewe, Dior…fat chance. most of their customers just watch their rubbish on TikTok and instagram.

This is a good take. The more niche the brand the more invested a customer probably is in it, while bigger labels can bank on being bought for their name alone. It sounds so obvious now you've said it 😄

 

[nationalsalt]

To know a percentage, we would need a real investigation with numbers.
But the majority of luxury shoppers don’t know about the designers and certainly don’t care.
There are exceptions though: Karl Lagerfeld, Tom Ford, John Galliano, Donatella Versace, Olivier Rousteing.
Obviously, the designers like Jean Paul Gaultier are very famous but I don’t think the mass knew about him at Hermes at the time.

But a lot of designers who have their namesake brands are also quite unknown.

But I have to say that I always make a point to separate a luxury customer to a fashion customer.
The person who buys the runway look or the commercial version of the runway look knows the designer and is sensible to the various changes of creative direction.
We saw it with Marni. A lot of their women’s customer just left.
There’s a little community of Fendi RTW customers (that I’m a part of) who stopped buying when Kim Jones took over.

When Alexander Wang took Balenciaga, a lot of customers left. However, the luxury customer, who was buying the bags, the sneakers, the motorcycle jackets and boots continued to buy them. He even got a hit with his sock sneakers.

As brands gains in popularity, they attracts luxury customers that are into the products and the cool factor and not so much about the house itself. It’s happening with Rick Owens, Thom Browne or CDG for example.

This is true re: percentages - I was more asking for people's opinions on approximate percentages, but I could have been clearer!

That's a very good point though re: luxury customers vs fashion customers.

Which leads me to another question....I wonder what the ratio of luxury customers to fashion customers is with most brands? 😄

My guess would be the smaller / more niche the label, the higher the ratio of fashion customers and vice versa?

 

[nationalsalt]

I mean… do most car buyers know the history of the car makes they purchase? Why does it matter, broadly speaking?

I wouldn't say it "matters" per se, I was just curious if the fashion circus - which keeps many of us entertained - has much of a direct impact on shoppers' decisions, or if they're more influenced by brand names etc.