Welcome to Generational Breakdown, a series where we explore consumer behaviour across all living generations to get a better idea of how they are buying luxury in 2025.
Millennials fall prey to many an overgeneralisation and stereotype. They can’t afford a house because they buy too much avocado toast. Their socks are too short. Their gym gear’s too tight.
In reality, though, this consumer group — born between 1981 and 1996, currently between 28 and 43 years old — is one of the most complex. For one, the range of life stages is diverse. Some have roommates, others have babies; some are beginning their careers, others are well advanced. It’s a generation shaped by fast-changing times and culture-shifting events and shocks, from the rise of social media to drastic events like 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis. Now, most millennials are settling into mature age — in still fast-changing times — and their preferences are shifting accordingly.
“I no longer need to chase the latest ‘It’ items, or just consume and consume and consume,” says 41-year-old Liane Wiggins, luxury brand consultant and former head of womenswear luxury buying at Matches, based in London. It’s a shift worth noting, coming from a generation that has shaped trends for two decades. “Millennials also make up the biggest share of luxury fashion buyers, giving them major influence over the high-end market,” adds GWI data journalist Shauna Moran.
For the majority of millennials, their early luxury purchases were dictated by milestones: new jobs, bonuses, promotions. “My first big personal acquisition that I used my own money to buy was a classic black Chanel flap bag,” says 36-year-old Shruti Sehgal, founder of equity-focused consultancy The Moonshot Company and former BerlinRosen executive, based between Seattle and Los Angeles. She was in her mid-20s and had just received her first “big girl bonus”. “That was a milestone, that was a signal to myself that I had financial power and that I could buy luxury for myself.”
This logic hasn’t completely shifted, even if millennials’ purchases have. “There’s still that feeling of, ‘I want to go and invest in an incredible handbag because I’ve achieved X amount,’ or ‘I want to go and invest in an incredible dinner,’” Wiggins says. “That luxury experience of purchasing is still something that I think millennials in particular yearn for — [if] not at the frequency of five, 10 years ago.”
The way millennials shop has changed. Wiggins (herself ex-Matches) says that she hasn’t yet found a curated online edit to rival that of her old workplace in terms of what she sees as a tight curation (versus endless pages to scroll). Nadine Choe, writer of hospitality and fashion newsletter The Stanza, age 32, grew up going to Barneys in New York and Los Angeles, and says the department store experience is no longer the same. “I do miss that experience of walking into a very curated world, and there’s a culture behind it,” she says. Now, living in Milan, Choe shops more vintage. The same goes for marketing: multiple millennials recall flicking through old magazine editorials and print ads growing up. “Everything now feels so manipulated to get attention,” Choe says. “Rarely are things done for the art of it.”
What brands sometimes forget is that many millennials are no longer ‘young’, says Pierre Dupreelle, BCG Global beauty lead. “Many millennials are in their 30s and 40s, facing life stages like parenting, home ownership and career advancement,” he says. “Brands must evolve their messaging to reflect these realities.”
Millennials don’t want to be marketed to as if they’re 10 years younger. When asked about inspiration, both Choe and Sehgal referenced older women they see in their day to day. “I live in a beautiful area of Milan where there’s a lot of sciura — Italian for older, elegant ladies — if you’ve seen @Sciuraglam on Instagram?” Choe asks. “I love seeing how they put their outfits together.” Sehgal agrees. “We’re very inspired by women who are at our mark, but it is later stages in life that are aspirational to us,” she says, adding that luxury brands tend to over-index on youth.
Thirty-three-year-old Monica Sallay, a senior event manager at a tech company based in Indianapolis, Indiana, agrees. “I almost feel forgotten,” she says. “There’s a lot of marketing to Gen Z — it was the same with us, that 20s generation.” Now, she says, millennials are having kids; switching up their lives; changing up their corporate jobs — and brands are generalising this stage of life. “It’s really different being a millennial now at the age I am and seeing the younger generation take priority with businesses.”
As millennials age and their spending habits shift, brands need to be evolving with this consumer group. One thing’s for sure: they’re getting tired. Tired of the sameness, tired of the endless scroll, tired of the lack of excitement. How can brands meet these shoppers where they are, while offering something fun to energise them?
The trifecta: Value, quality, originality
Millennials grew up with the concept of the well-made It-bag.
After Sehgal purchased her first classic Chanel flap, she sought out a classic logo Louis Vuitton and a Dior Saddle, she recalls. “What I chose early in my 20s was very ‘classic status symbol’, and I think for my generation coming up, that was handbags,” she says.
“I feel particularly of a generation where it was about It-bags, and it was about the latest brands, and everything being quite branded,” Wiggins says. “It’s not about that now. There’s something about really engaging with those super quality pieces, those pieces that really feel like an investment that comes with a bit of a status symbol.”
Millennials still want a quality bag. But now, these It-bags have reached their saturation point, Choe says. “I remember when buying a bag in a store was so exciting. And that feeling of like, ‘Wow, this is like something that maybe I saved up for; something that I’ve been eyeing for a while.’” The last luxury purchase she remembers being truly excited about was a Chanel bag that she bought in London, working in finance, with her first bonus. It was a special-edition Camera bag.
“Now I’ve seen everything so many times online, nothing feels that exciting or new or interesting anymore,” she adds. “Would I go into a store and buy a really expensive handbag now? The answer is no.”
Sallay collects vintage Issey Miyake (as well as other brands like Jean Paul Gaultier and Comme des Garçons), and for her, when shopping luxury, value is key. “It’s always watching the value that I can get out of things: measuring that, measuring how it ages, measuring the return on investment,” she says. “I think a lot of millennials think that way. As a generation, we’ve been through a lot of different financial hurdles.”
The quality and craftsmanship aren’t the same, either, Wiggins adds. Those first purchases — designer bag, sunglasses, whatever it was — felt like they had a real craft element to them, she says. Now, as aesthetics homogenise and quality declines — all while prices creep up — millennial consumers are looking for alternatives.
For Choe, this means vintage. Her most recent purchase was an early 2000s Roberto Cavalli gown, which she’d spent over a year hunting down. “It has to be something really rare and unique and beautiful,” Choe says, adding that she looks to this period and earlier because they’re made better. “When I buy vintage Alaïa, or a vintage Mugler blazer from the ’80s, it still fits impeccably. The sewing, the craftsmanship, it just lasts. It stands the test of time.”
Though Sallay primarily buys vintage, one of her most recent firsthand luxury purchases was a Murakami high-rise bum bag from the reissue collection. The style was never issued before, which is, in part, what convinced her to purchase. The other element was the exclusivity and subsequent hype. “They were low on inventory, people were on the Louis Vuitton Reddit. People were panicking, their orders were being cancelled,” she recalls. “It was a race to even try to get your hands on that first launch of the rainbow print. That really hit me on the impulse.” (She’d also just gotten a bonus at work.)
Wiggins’s top considerations for making a purchase are art, design and craft, along with the storytelling behind it. She points to Jonathan Anderson’s work at his eponymous brand and Loewe (she’s looking forward to what he does at Dior). Grace Wales Bonner is another. “She just understands craft,” Wiggins says. “I bring out my crochet skirt that I adore every season every summer, because it just works and works and works.”
Beyond the capsule wardrobe
Millennials spent much of their 20s buying investment pieces timed to milestones. Conjurious with those purchasing habits, they also built out capsule wardrobes. After all, they needed something to wear to the jobs that funded those splurges.
“I’m super fortunate that I have this wardrobe that I’ve curated over the years,” Wiggins says. “It was that building-block mentality for me. I’ve done it already.” She likens this yearn for discovery to the experience of first shopping for luxury when she was younger.
For work, Wiggins says, you need a cohesive wardrobe. She’s spent the last 10-odd years wardrobe-building. “The best blazers, the best tailoring, the best footwear… I think once you’ve gone through that, now I’m like, ‘Wow, I just want to discover incredible product again, that has that history.’”
Sehgal no longer seeks out products that are ‘staples’. “It needs to make me feel light,” she says. “There is an escapism with purchases that don’t have to be such serious investments. They need to be a little bit more fun, a little crazy.” These days, there’s much more colour in Sehgal’s wardrobe, and her heels are higher, she adds.
Here, nostalgia comes into play — and it’s not just vintage. In Sallay’s view, reissues are made for millennials. “For our generation, we saw a lot of fashion embedded with logos and with the signature lines that have defined brands really going forward. But it was all kind of out of grasp for a lot of us because we were young, we were either kids or teenagers,” she says. “We would see adults or celebrities wearing them — we would covet, but we couldn’t have. Now that we’re older, these reissues come out and we can buy them. We have adult money, if we’re lucky.”
This shift to more joyful items is indeed a matter of economic security, Seghal believes. “If you’re a luxury consumer where you have a little psychological safety, you have economic safetyhood, you’re willing to take creative risk in your purchases because you have your staple stuff,” she says. “Now, it’s about having fun — I did not think about fun purchases and luxury in my 20s.”
This checks out: millennials are the most likely to say they feel affluent, according to GWI research, and Moran adds that they’re less conservative than older generations who may be wealthier on paper. As these shoppers come into their financial security, they shift from the necessities and investment purchases of their mid-20s to more emotional goods. This is informed, in part, by their social use, Moran adds. “Millennials came of age with Instagram and Pinterest — platforms where curated lifestyles are the norm — for them, status is more visual and emotional,” she says.
Where to reach millennials
Millennials were the early social media platform adopters when Instagram launched back in 2010, and YouTube in 2005 before it, recalls BCG’s Dupreelle. They shaped the rise of influencer marketing and peer-driven brand discovery.
But now, many of their priorities are elsewhere. This doesn’t mean millennials are all switching offline — quite the contrary — but they’re less tied to their social feeds for discovery. Fewer of this cohort are scrolling endlessly, instead shopping online to save time. Sehgal shops online “100 per cent of the time”, though it’s not by desire, she adds. “I have a kid, I run a company. I would love the luxury of lunch and stroll, but I don’t have that kind of time.”
She’s not alone. Sixty-one per cent of millennials typically prefer to shop online than in-store, per GWI. It’s not surprising, given they grew up during the rise of e-commerce and were the first to normalise such platforms, Moran says. “Stretched thin between work and family, online shopping offers millennials what traditional retail can’t,” she says, “shopping on their schedule.”
Millennials also enjoy real-time conversations over one-way marketing, Moran continues. For product research, millennials stand out for leaning on messaging or live chat services, forums or messaging boards, and micro-blogs, she says. Sehgal can attest. “I’m the weirdo that gets the text messages and looks,” she says. But only for a few favourite brands, including Rag Bone and Theory.
That said, many millennials are also experiencing digital fatigue, Dupreelle flags. “They increasingly seek meaningful content and community over vanity metrics. Events in-store are still very relevant with them, as well as clienteling.”
But not everyone wants such hands-on service. Sallay shops for her vintage finds online (she trawls Ebay), and when it comes to shopping new IRL, she doesn’t want a sales associate. “I feel like older generations really appreciate that white-glove service, but it’s not my vibe,” she says.
Though Wiggins understands the convenience of a digital purchase, for her, the experience is what makes it worth it. “I’ve got children, and everything’s always a juggle,” she says. “Everyone’s always really busy. But you’re always wanting that extra piece of experience now, with whatever you’re consuming.” Luxury included.
Wiggins recalls visits to her favourite hotels whose store curations prompted her to spend: Palm Heights, Grand Cayman; Estelle Manor in the Cotswolds; Scotland’s Gleneagles. Most recent was a trip to Majorca’s Hotel Corazón, where she bought T-shirts and keyrings (and wanted to buy artwork, though it wasn’t for sale yet — which only made her want it more). “It’s small and niche, but the way the merchandise is put together is really interesting,” Wiggins says. “It feels like a community that’s being built here.”
Correction: Updated to reflect that Wiggins was referring to Estelle Manor in the Cotswolds, not London’s Maison Estelle.
