What Happens When Fashion Only Serves the Rich

And now today’s big story…

At the end of each year in Back Row, I try to sum up the past 12 months in fashion. This year, I couldn’t stop thinking about all the ways the fashion industry has given itself over to the über wealthy.

We hear about it all the time in the “Retail Confessions” column, where I talk to luxury fashion sales people. We also heard about it in the interviews I conducted recently with Very Important Clients (the 2 percent of luxury shoppers who comprise 40 percent of sales) and their stylists. There are the fashion shows that clients can only attend if they are expected to spend tens of thousands if not six figures. The limited-edition handbags only they can buy. The commission-based salespeople eager not just to help them, but befriend them. The ritzy, invite-only shopping events just for them. And in general, the elite level of concierge service — a free trip to get tailoring measurements, a sales associate who will take your call in the middle of the night — that no average or “aspirational” shoppers would ever receive.

Meanwhile, sales associates view the “shoe client” with disinterest. Those who don’t drop serious money with a brand and just want to pop into a store to browse might have to wait in a line outside. Ready-to-wear is so often so exorbitantly priced that no average person could ever dream of even saving up to own any of it. Designer logo T-shirts can easily cost $1,000, wallets more than $800, and sneakers more than $1,000. Designer apparel prices have gotten so high that even rich people wonder what they’re paying for, and if brands just see them as fools.

Through the pandemic, luxury brands increased prices assuming that rich people would buy, because that’s simply what rich people do. For a while, that thesis proved correct. People did buy the Birkins, which are 25 percent more expensive than in 2019 in the U.S., and Chanel flap bags, whose prices nearly doubled since then. In the process, fashion left aspirational customers behind. Maybe this was just the new business model — the rich get Birkins, everyone else gets Shein.

In 2025, we witnessed the apparent downsides to this strategy. This year was not an optimistic one for the fashion business, despite what seemed like an auspicious slew of new creative director debuts at 15 major brands. Sales of personal luxury goods were flat. Luxury behemoth LVMH even experienced a quarter when fashion and leather goods sales slipped 9 percent.

I don’t blame the salespeople for trying to maximize commission and earn as much as they can for themselves and their families, but the effect has been to close off the world of fashion to all but a select few with an outsize share of wealth, leaving everyone else shivering in a line outside on the sidewalk. I struggle to find a word for it other than depressing.

Everyone from the middle class on down being excluded from fashion isn’t a new phenomenon — I’ve been writing about it in Back Row for years. What feels new about 2025 is that brands started to see what may be the limits of this strategy. The VICs I recently interviewed did not feel all that inspired by the recent slew of creative director debuts. The great reset of spring 2026 largely amounted to an aesthetic rotation — Chanel under Matthieu Blazy now looks like Bottega Veneta; Dior under Jonathan Anderson now looks like Loewe, etc. Sheer unadulterated beauty seems increasingly hard to find on the runways.

As we enter 2026, we’re seeing the case for brands to broaden the tent. Though the profits from aspirational customers may not be as great, a diverse customer base is good for creativity, and creativity is good for both business and a bleak world. How do you get people who have no choice but to be judicious with their money to buy an expensive, luxury fashion item, even if it’s just (”just”) a card holder or a pair of sandals? What makes something “luxury” has become so nebulous that even Anna Wintour — the leader in all of this! — cast aspersions on the term itself. “I hate that word,” she told David Remnick. “It doesn’t mean anything.” It’s not the fashion industry’s fault that “luxury” has been slapped on everything from toilet paper to laundry detergent — but this makes it even more crucial for the fashion industry to offer something that’s actually special.

Why should aspirational consumers want to opt in to fashion? Billionaires are viewed with increasing negativity by the public, so why would the masses want to assimilate with them in even a small way like owning a wallet or shoes by the same brands they wear?

It used to be that you’d work your way up in a career and buy a designer bag as a sign that you got the promotion or the raise and are moving on up in the world — that you had somehow made it. You may also have been working toward owning a home (or already owned one), having children, or enjoying other markers of financially stable middle-class life, like going to the beach for vacation once a year. Everyone should be able to indulge, be it on a nice handbag once a decade or going out to eat every so often with the family. Yet indulgences feel increasingly — depressingly — isolated to the rich.

Fashion simply mirrors the damaging silo-ing of society writ large. In one camp, you have rich people who are flying private to shop at private Loro Piana and Tiffany events, where they may drop six or seven figures on cashmere and jewelry. In the other, you have people buying $7 tops from Temu. Fashion’s middle used to be what were called “masstige” brands that were fancier than what you’d find in most mall stores but also not as prohibitive as Prada. Now, those brands (say, Zimmermann) easily charge $1,000 or $2,000 for a dress. The early 2010s idea of masstige brands is disappearing from the market altogether. New York Fashion Week used to launch many of them; now, the event feels like it’s dying. London Fashion Week has always been known as the rebellious creative one of the four main fashion weeks, but it, too, has been struggling for years for proper recognition. (I agree with Emilia Petrarca’s take that, at this rate, Fashion Week should occur once every one or two years so that it feels special again.) Is Zara the new middle ground? Is it people with disposable income who managed to save up to buy a pair of sneakers or a bag from sales people who wish they didn’t have to deal with them?

I wondered how the current moment compared to fashion consumption during the Gilded Age. Historian Elizabeth Block, who writes Gilded Age Fashion on Substack, told me in an email that back then, like today, luxury fashion was only available to the wealthy. She added, “As the Gilded Age ended, well-made fashion, like the tailor-made suit for women, became more accessible, but those outfits had a more practical aspect to them.”

We hear often about how today’s society resembles a “new Gilded Age.” A recent Oxfam report found that the ten richest U.S. billionaires got $698 billion richer this past year, while the “richest 0.0001% control a greater a share of wealth than in the Gilded Age.” We hear increasing amounts of speculation over who will become the world’s first trillionaire. Meanwhile, much of the rest of the population struggles to figure out how to afford basics like childcare, to say nothing of saving up for a well-made bag or blazer that may be a splurge, but that makes them feel like a million bucks.

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