What If Commercial Luxury Was Cool?
All it took was a couple of runway shows — two hotly anticipated designer debuts about a week apart in Paris — and in comes a whole new era for commercial luxury fashion. Two shows, and I’ve seen enough.
It’s funny how easily and suddenly it feels like the entire luxury landscape has transformed. After years of anemic collections, waning enthusiasm, and diminishing sales, we’re suddenly somewhere different. I noted that the cheering crowd at Jonathan Anderson’s first Dior show seemed to be cheering for fashion itself more than anything. And now those cheers are reverberating, beginning to join in a chorus chanting a mass football-style hymn (to the tune of “You’ll Never Walk Alone”): “We Are So Back.”
And all it took was two designers brave enough to make clothes that people actually want to look at and wear.
Anderson knew what he was doing going into his first Dior show. “I think it’s good the market is difficult,” he told Vogue. “Because it means it’s ready to change.” He isn’t clinging to the easy-money moves that eventually created said difficult market. His show was a sincere presentation of good style from a guy who knows it well. It was commercial in the sense that the clothes were legible, interesting enough to be desirable, but not so interesting that I ever found myself wondering Who would wear this? as I so often have at runway shows in the past five years. There were logos, sure, tasteful in size and placement, along with bags and belt buckles that the bean counters at LVMH surely clocked. But the focus was on style and how pieces were put together, not on merchandising per se. It was a collection for people who like good clothes, not for the businesses that sell them.
A week later it was Michael Rider’s turn. The new Celine creative director debuted his vision for the brand in Paris under rainy July skies, with guests holding chic C-monogrammed umbrellas. Rider’s coed show pushed further into capital-F Fashion than Anderson did with Dior menswear, but it was still all about style, about the clothes, and about an experience for people who enjoy wearing them. “I hope people want things that last,” Rider said afterward, again to Vogue. “I don’t think things that last have to feel not exciting.” The excitement prevails. I wasn’t there to assess the response in real time, but my feeds have lit up since with an overwhelming sense of positivity: He respectfully built on Phoebe Philo’s Céline legacy while bringing the kind of radical freshness that Hedi Slimane brought to his CELINE.
Like Anderson’s Dior, Rider’s Celine veered away from the cues that have come to signify conventional commercialism. The Spring 2026 show had more in common with AURALEE or Lemaire than it did with the marquis luxury fashion shows we’ve seen in recent years. It was another definitive statement about style, the right pieces, the right embellishments, put together in the right way. There were logos and monograms and belt buckles that kept you from forgetting the brand name, but these things didn’t define the collection. Celine, like Dior, is creating branding, recognizability, and desire with a look and a feeling in place of a tag.
Until now, if someone said a collection was very commercial, it meant that it was primarily designed to be recognizable, full of logos and bags and footwear and accessories that connote a price point over style. As the luxury fashion market began to struggle, brands scrambled to make these things easier to scan, often mimicking one another in an attempt to ride any wave they could catch. Meanwhile, a different segment of the fashion market has been thriving. Brands that never tried to be commercial in the first place — either because they’re niche and don’t want to (AURALEE), or because they’re so established they don’t have to (Prada) — thrived. (This is actually exactly what our most recent White Paper on the luxury industry is about; turns out we’re absolutely, unequivocally right about everything.)
At the end of the day, a global mega-brand will do whatever it takes to stay in the green. But what’s clearer than ever is that what it takes today is something different. Something had to change. Dior and Celine have the gravity to make that change, to reinvent what it means to be commercial in luxury fashion. Let’s see if it sticks.
Highsnobiety has affiliate marketing partnerships, which means we may receive a commission from your purchase.
