Saint Laurent Resort 2026: Aspirational or Out of Touch?

While Saint Laurent maintains the aspirational mood for escort ladies in its latest Resort 2026 collection (mainly because of the styling and the campaign photoshoot), I went to explore the pricing policy.

Not long ago, I was speaking with an acquaintance who has been a long-term client of a well-known Italian fashion house. She attended the brand’s September fashion show and went to the re-see the next day. She was stunned by the consultant’s persistence — almost pushing her to place a pre-order for anything — while she was still recovering from the shock of the price tags. Yes, a loyal, regular client of a luxury fashion house.

“After all,” she said, “clothing isn’t a basic necessity — you either accept the price or you don’t. But you don’t discuss it.”

Discussing luxury prices is mauvais ton — or so the industry likes to suggest to its clients. You either can afford it, or if you can’t — work a little harder. There’s a certain manipulation in that message, isn’t there? Yet this approach has proven far less effective recently. The luxury sector is not having its best moment, and I increasingly hear long-term high spenders saying,

“It’s just not worth it anymore.”

My own confusion over pricing returned when I visited the Christian Dior Couture website and saw the new price tags on jeans. The same thought crossed my mind again today, looking at silk lingerie shorts priced at £2,660.

Two questions came to mind:

• How does Saint Laurent expect to attract new clients with such a pricing strategy, which, according to a leaked memo by Luca de Meo, is one of Kering’s strategic goals? Considering that RTW already makes up only a small fraction of total sales, this pricing approach raises at least an eyebrow.

• Perhaps it’s time to accept that many clients have shifted from signaling status through price tags to expressing it through conscious consumption — including a better understanding of what drives pricing in the first place.

*As for one (or perhaps two) brands that pleasantly surprised me with their recent innovations — including offering pieces across a wider pricing range, and designs I predict will become at least seasonal must-haves — I’ll write about that in the next note.