Introducing How to Sell Now

Reported by Vogue.

The luxury fashion industry is in a state of beautiful, chaotic flux — and if you're trying to sell anything right now, the old playbook is officially useless. Vogue Business has spent years tracking the turbulence: a global pandemic, a luxury boom that burned itself out, an e-commerce reckoning, tariff chaos, the GLP-1 moment, and AI arriving faster than anyone was ready for. Now, according to Vogue, it has distilled all of that institutional knowledge into a single, sweeping resource: How to Sell Now, a six-chapter interactive retail guide built for 2026.

The scope is serious. The guide draws on data from Vogue Shopping, platform analysis across eight social channels, and a survey of 3,103 luxury consumers worldwide, plus in-depth interviews with 20 shoppers across global markets — research led by Anusha Couttigane, head of custom insights at Vogue Business. Twenty-five brands were put under the microscope, from Hermès and Bottega Veneta to Coach, Jacquemus, and Tory Burch, with executive interviews from companies including Mytheresa, Vestiaire Collective, JW Anderson, and Canada Goose. Consumer research spanned six markets: the US, UK, France, Italy, China, Mexico, and the Gulf Cooperation Council — with Mexico marking a first for the publication's research scope.

What the guide actually covers

The six chapters map the full retail landscape: Multi-Brand, Social and AI, Resale, Brand, Product, and Direct-to-Consumer (the DTC chapter was produced in partnership with Swap Commerce). Each addresses a specific pressure point. Luxury shoppers are now cross-referencing AI tools, resale platforms, editorial, and social media before they commit to a purchase, and price hikes have made them brutally discerning about quality and longevity. Meanwhile, multi-brand retail is contracting — brands are pulling back from wholesale distribution and going selective — while DTC, once a pandemic-era survival tactic, has quietly become the industry's default operating model. On the resale side, platforms like Vestiaire Collective are no longer a afterthought; they're functioning as discovery and authentication engines. And social media? Still a conversion problem, but AI-powered search overviews are now non-negotiable for any brand marketer with a pulse.

"This is the most comprehensive research package Vogue Business has ever delivered," Couttigane said, noting that the analysis offers "essential foundation for executive brand leaders seeking bespoke insights on the competitor landscape" — including, for the first time, a serious look at how generative AI is actively reshaping both shopper behavior and commercial strategy.

The full report is available exclusively to Vogue Business Executive Members, but the takeaway is clear for anyone watching the industry: the brands winning right now are the ones that have stopped treating individual retail channels as separate strategies and started treating them as a single, integrated ecosystem.

Read the original at Vogue.