Welcome to The American Thread, a recurring column on the fate and future of fashion in the US, written by Vogue Business editor-at-large Christina Binkley. To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here.
When Off-White showed its spring 2025 collection on a Brooklyn basketball court in September, designer Ib Kamara said he was focusing the Milan-based label on its American roots. Nearly three years after the death of its revered founder, Virgil Abloh, it felt like a new beginning for the LVMH-owned house.
It turns out that it was more like an ending. Three weeks later, LVMH announced it had sold Off-White to Bluestar Alliance — a deal that had surely been in the works long before the New York Fashion Week show.
The sale is a shocker to anyone who felt seen by — or just respected — Abloh’s take on fashion, which playfully blended streetwear with art, irreverence and joy. Months before he died from a rare cancer in 2021, Abloh had sold his brand to LVMH as a way to protect his family financially.
It’s doubtful that he envisioned Off-White being part of an investment group that owns mall brands like Limited Too and Brookstone. Bluestar may have extended the life of those brands by finding value in bits and pieces, but it has also devalued others remarkably.
Catherine Malandrino and Nanette Lepore were once beloved New York runway labels whose wealthy clients looked to them for sophistication and high-quality design before they were sold to Bluestar. It took only a few years for them to be chopped into vestiges of themselves. Today, on Amazon, you can buy a Catherine Malandrino sheath dress for $16.99 and a Nanette Lepore espadrille for $23.03.
What does that say about the possible future of Off-White? With visions of Off-White logo hoodies being hawked on Amazon for $29.99, I reached out to Bluestar with questions. A spokeswoman says its co-founders, Joey Gabbay and Ralph Gindi, were in Milan talking with the Off-White staff, and were unavailable to speak with me.
But Gabbay, who serves as Bluestar’s chief executive, sent an email statement when I asked for details on their plans, and whether they will attempt to avoid the fate of the other labels in their portfolio. He said the group hopes Off-White will usher Bluestar into the luxury sector.
“The acquisition of Off-White represents the start of many opportunities we are exploring in the luxury sector,” he wrote. “Our strategy will honour and protect Virgil Abloh’s legacy, while embracing new opportunities to drive forward an exciting new era for one of fashion’s most influential brands. Off-White will remain a powerful force at the intersection of fashion, culture and innovation.”
Those are the right things to say and it’s easy to imagine that they aspire to operate at the intersection of fashion and culture. Still, Bluestar considers itself a “brand management company”, according to its website. That brings it in line with, but not necessarily in league with, the larger Authentic Brands Group, which recently announced a surprise deal of its own — an alliance with Saks Global that’s intended to find new avenues to sell Authentic’s brands, which include Vince, Barneys New York, Hunter and Juicy Couture. (Plus, Sports Illustrated, and the estates of Marilyn Monroe and Muhammad Ali.)
The US has never managed to build a luxury conglomerate to rival that of LVMH, Richemont or Kering in Europe. These companies are long-term investors in their brands, quite the opposite of private equity and brand management companies that seek to squeeze out revenue with licences and collaborations. Americans, on the other hand, have been studying brand management since Procter Gamble turned commodities like coffee and detergent into brands with emotional connections for consumers.
We may now have reached peak brand management. These amalgamators see fashion labels as more valuable for their names than their designs. When a brand is worth more as intellectual property than as a maker of goods, it’s tempting to slap that name all over the place, raising memories of ’80s-era Gucci, when the company began licensing its name to board games, sports gear and other products that had little to do with the Italian brand. The approach flooded the market and diluted the power of Gucci. Luxury brands learnt their lessons in the ’80s, and have become increasingly careful with licensing ever since. But the incentives for brand management companies in this century have often led to short-term decision-making, opting to sell more products via collaborations and other gimmicks for quick money.
We have yet to see how the futures of Off-White and Barneys play out, but we have a few hints.
Authentic has said its plans with Saks will begin with the revamp of beloved Barneys, but it seems not for the authentic luxury clients who used it to discover new designers and locate genuine fashion-forward merchandise. Instead, Authentic has opened Barneys New York residences in Tulum, Mexico. One of those four-bedroom, but not-beachfront, condos (the website says they’re five minutes from the beach), can be rented for $282 per night in December — a bargain for a unit that sleeps 10. The plans include more Barneys residences elsewhere, as well as a private label Barneys line that will sell sportswear, home and other categories at Saks Fifth Avenue, turning former competitors into collaborators.
The luxury fashion industry is in a sticky spot right now. Sales are under pressure, as LVMH’s disappointing 4.4 per cent revenue drop in its third quarter, announced 15 October, isn’t the only worrying news. Kering’s first-half results revealed a shocking 50 per cent drop in operating profits and an 11 per cent fall in revenues.
That’s two industry bellwethers, encompassing dozens of brands, suffering setbacks as consumers pull back.
It’s necessary to be sceptical of brand-proliferation companies in general, and particularly at the beginning of what appears to be a luxury downturn — a time when nervous consumers retreat from unnecessary spending and get picky about where their dollars go. Many luxury consumers are becoming wary of brands for brands’ sake, and many others seek labels that produce smaller quantities with higher quality and traceable supply chains.
Marketing celebrity capsule collections with figures like Joe Jonas or Ciara, as Bluestar is doing with Scotch Soda and Bebe, can give little more than a temporary boost to sales for a fashion label. Churning out luxury for the masses too often turns out to be not very luxurious at all.
The trick for these companies might be to see themselves less as investors and more as makers, focused on building brand value through design and manufacturing. This is how the big luxury conglomerates in Europe have built the industry there, creating billions in market value and turning family-owned luggage makers and haute couture houses into global juggernauts.
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