Chanel, Miu Miu, Burberry: does a 'return to product' signal the end of outrageous price hikes in luxury?
After two years of a slowdown in the luxury market, Chanel has reportedly recorded a 16 percent growth in its like-for-like revenue for the first half of 2026. This result was notably driven by the first collections from Matthieu Blazy.
Beyond the case of Chanel, this performance prompts the question: what if, after years of price hikes, upscaling and network expansion, the product once again became the main driver of growth?
In luxury, there is a rule that recent years had almost made us forget. To sell more, you must first create the desire to buy.
Chanel has just provided particularly compelling proof of this.
According to information reported by Bloomberg on August 4 and picked up by Reuters, the house reportedly recorded a 16 percent increase in its like-for-like revenue in the first half of 2026. The figure comes from a source close to Chanel's accounts. It has not been detailed by the house, which remains a private company and publishes little financial information. Nevertheless, it represents a level of growth that places it above several major competitors in the sector.
The performance is all the more interesting as it comes after a proven period of slowdown in luxury. It also occurs at a time when major groups are trying to understand how to recreate desirability without simply relying on new price hikes.
At Chanel, part of the answer has a name: Matthieu Blazy.
First commercial test of the Blazy era
The new artistic director presented his first Chanel collection for spring/summer 2026 in October 2025, before its arrival in stores at the beginning of March 2026. The launch did not go unnoticed.
From the very first weeks, Chanel boutiques experienced unusual footfall.
In Paris, the historic boutique at 31 rue Cambon saw a flood of customers for the new pieces. In New York, the situation was spectacular enough for Vogue to speak of a real “Matthieu-mania”, reporting queues outside the 57th Street store.
FashionUnited also documented this excitement from March, with products quickly selling out in several stores.
This phenomenon is important as it allows for a distinction between two concepts often confused in luxury strategies: visibility and desirability.
A campaign can increase a house's visibility. A new collection can recreate desire. The transition from one to the other is precisely what investors are looking to observe today.
What Blazy changes in the offering
The appointment of Matthieu Blazy obviously does not mean that Chanel is abandoning its fundamentals. On the contrary, the designer plays with the house's historical markers; tweed; the camellia; chains; pearls; and the suit. He reworks them with a more fluid, more contemporary and often more functional approach.
During his first show in October 2025, Le Monde noted how Blazy had reinterpreted Chanel's traditional codes while introducing his own textile language, particularly through materials and volumes.
This is probably where part of the commercial explanation lies. The renewal is not radical enough to alienate the historical clientele. It is, however, visible enough to give this clientele a reason to return and a younger clientele a reason to look at Chanel differently. In other words, the product evolves without the brand ceasing to be Chanel. For a house whose value rests precisely on the power of its codes, this equation is far from secondary.
Bag as an economic accelerator
It is also necessary to look beyond the clothing. In luxury, prêt-à-porter collections contribute to a brand's desirability, but accessories often play a much more direct role in monetising this desirability.
Blazy's first collections have significantly renewed the handbag offering.
As early as March, Bloomberg noted the enthusiasm for the new creations, with customers queuing to access the products. The article particularly highlighted the role of handbags in Chanel's ability to convert attention into sales.
This mechanism is interesting. A house can invest heavily in a show, a campaign or a new artistic direction. However, if the product presented does not trigger a purchase, the marketing spend remains essentially a communication expense.
Conversely, when a new product becomes immediately desirable, the show becomes a commercial machine. Traffic increases, in-store appointments increase, waiting lists appear, customers return and social media amplifies the phenomenon.
The handbag, being much more financially accessible than a complete prêt-à-porter look, often becomes the first point of entry.
Chanel is not the only example
The case of Miu Miu is probably the most remarkable example of recent years. In the first half of 2025, the Prada group brand posted 49 percent growth in its retail sales, while the Prada group's turnover grew by 9 percent. The group attributed this performance to the brand's creativity, its collections, its product launches and its ability to maintain a strong cultural resonance.
For the full 2025 financial year, Miu Miu recorded a further 35 percent increase in retail sales, despite an already very high basis for comparison. Prada particularly highlights the brand's creativity, its launches, its shows and the balanced growth across product categories and regions.
The comparison with Chanel is therefore instructive. The two houses obviously do not have the same positioning or the same brand architecture. They do, however, illustrate the same mechanism: when the offering becomes desirable enough, it can create its own commercial momentum.
Burberry makes another bet: selling fewer, but better, items
Another particularly interesting example for understanding the importance of assortment is Burberry. In its 2025/26 annual report, the British house explicitly states that it is rebalancing its assortment, with seasonal buying more focused on key styles.
The group also states its intention to strengthen its heritage categories, notably coats and scarves, increase their in-store density and better align the assortment with different customer profiles. This move is very different from Chanel's.
Burberry is seeking to rationalise and refocus its offering. Chanel, on the other hand, seems to be benefiting from the opposite effect: a new creative proposition strong enough to reactivate the entire assortment.
In both cases, however, the question is the same: what is actually being put in front of the customer?
Return of 'product-led growth' in luxury?
This is perhaps the real lesson from this sequence. For much of the last decade, luxury growth has relied on several levers: store openings; geographical expansion; price increases; upscaling; category development; and winning new customers.
The model worked, then the mechanism seized up. As price tags soared, consumers began to demand accountability. The question was no longer just “how much does this bag cost?”, but “what justifies this price today?”. This is a phenomenon of blindness that we recently questioned with industry expert Alessandro Maria Ferreri in “Has luxury despised the lucidity of its customers? The uncompromising autopsy”. By relying solely on pricing power, the houses ended up underestimating their clientele's discernment.
In this context, the product is returning to the forefront. The phenomenon is particularly visible in brands that manage to create identifiable “objects of desire”: a bag, a shoe, a jacket, a coat, a silhouette.
The consumer is no longer just buying a price increase. They are buying something new.
Good collection can also improve stock economics
Behind the artistic direction, an operational mechanism is at play: a more efficient assortment simultaneously improves stock turnover, the full-price sell-through rate, network productivity and profitability per square metre.
This is where the question of assortment becomes much more interesting than a simple question of artistic direction. A bad product costs twice. It uses materials, production time, transport, storage and retail space before, possibly, having to be sold at a discount.
A good product has the opposite effect. It can sell quickly at full price, while attracting customers to the store who are likely to buy from other categories.
Academic research on assortment optimisation also confirms the economic importance of product selection, particularly in environments where capacity and stock are limited.
In luxury, this equation is even more sensitive since scarcity management is an integral part of the model.
Chanel's 16 percent increase should be viewed with caution
We must avoid turning this performance into proof that “luxury is back”. That would be jumping the gun.
First, the 16 percent figure is a like-for-like figure reported by Bloomberg and Reuters, not a detailed half-year account published by Chanel. Chanel is a private company and communicates far less financial information than listed groups.
Second, the Blazy effect is still recent. The first collection only arrived in stores in March. It is therefore difficult at this stage to know what part of the performance is due to a genuine structural shift in demand and what part corresponds to the novelty effect associated with a highly anticipated artistic succession.
Finally, Chanel remains an atypical house due to its brand power, its control over distribution and its clientele.
What works at Chanel cannot, therefore, be mechanically replicated at all brands.
Signal sent to the market is difficult to ignore
Nevertheless, the contrast is striking. While several major listed houses are still struggling to find clear growth, Chanel has reportedly grown by 16 percent in the first half of the year.
Reuters points out that this performance comes as LVMH and Hermès have only shown much more modest growth in their relevant business areas, in an environment that remains challenging for the luxury sector. The message, therefore, is less “Matthieu Blazy saves Chanel” and more “the product can still make a considerable difference”.
This is an important nuance. Fashion is not an industry where simply optimising costs, improving distribution or increasing prices can guarantee growth. It retains an almost industrial characteristic: demand must be regularly recreated by the offering.
When this offering becomes desirable enough, it can bring the entire commercial machine along with it.
Illusion of pricing power is over
The Chanel case could thus herald a new phase for luxury. After the race for price, followed by the race for network and visibility, the battle could now revert to being about the product.
Not necessarily more products.
Instead, better products that are more clearly identified and better distributed, with more new items capable of creating a commercial event without diluting the house's historic codes.
Miu Miu has proven this with its own style. Burberry is attempting to rebuild its offering around its flagship categories. With Matthieu Blazy, Chanel seems to have found the balance between heritage and novelty.
The coming quarters will therefore not determine if the “Blazy phenomenon” is real, as the initial figures already confirm it, but whether it will be sustainable in the long term.