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.
