Whether you’re walking through the streets of SoHo or Beverly Hills, you’d be hard pressed to get through an afternoon without seeing at least a few Alo tote bags. But would these same girls shell out upwards of $3,000 for a leather handbag from the athleisure label?
CEO Danny Harris is betting on yes. Next month, Alo is launching a line of Italian-made leather bags. There are three styles at launch, and prices for the category will range between $1,200 to $3,600. A campaign (with some major faces) will drop 9 September, the same date the bags will be available for pre-order. They’ll then be available to pick up from 22 September in 23 of Alo’s top-performing stores (or “sanctuaries”, as the brand refers to them), including Beverly Hills, New York’s SoHo, London’s Regent Street and Aspen. They’ll also be available online via a concierge-style experience (separate from Alo’s usual site).
“It’s the perfect progression for Alo to be able to move into this category,” Harris says. The launch comes as definitions of health and luxury are shifting and merging. “Health is wealth,” Harris says, repeating the age-old adage that’s taken on new weight in 2025. “Health is luxury wellness, mindfulness, mental wellness — this is the future.” Earlier this month, Alo launched a ‘Luxury is Wellness’ campaign featuring Kendall Jenner.
The concept of health as a luxury has indeed picked up this year. Longevity is generating major investment. Good sleep is a high-brow wellness craze. Meanwhile, fragrance is getting the wellness treatment; as is men’s beauty and bodycare. Harris, though, is working backwards. As luxury brands venture into the health and wellness space, Alo has its sights set on luxury product development. The CEO is betting that the community it’s built around wellness will now spend top dollar to buy into its luxury bags.
“Our community, our culture, is not necessarily going out to clubs and drinking. We’re not hanging out at the café sipping a martini and carrying a handbag,” Harris says. “We’re at a Pilates studio, or we’re setting an intention in our yoga class and focusing on our health and wellness — and carrying a handbag.”
It’s an interesting take off of last year’s Brat summer, when hedonism was at a high in the cultural consciousness. But in Alo’s corner of the industry, the wellness craze never slowed. In 2025, the amount of US adults drinking alcohol hit a new low, largely because young people are drinking less, according to The New York Times. And 30 per cent of Gen Zs and millennials in the US say they’re prioritising wellness “a lot more” than a year ago, per McKinsey.
But what does this have to do with selling handbags? It’s all about the lifestyle, Harris says. He’s confident that the dedicated community Alo has built is invested enough in the brand — and the way of living they associate with — to swap their traditional luxury goods for an Italian-made, leather, Alo-branded handbag. Or, at least, to add it to their collection.
“If they were buying a Chanel bag, they will now buy an Alo bag,” Harris says. “If they buy two or three bags, sure — they still might buy a Chanel bag.”
In a crowded luxury landscape, filled with heritage players looking to capture young consumers and direct-to-consumer (DTC) upstarts offering fresh, accessible takes on leather goods, can Alo’s upmarket move work?
Next-gen luxury
What about heritage? What about it, would be Harris’s response. He acknowledges that Alo doesn’t have the legacy or the history of European houses. But the CEO’s theory is that Alo’s long-time emphasis on health and wellness — and strong Gen Z audience that has convened around this ethos — gives the brand the cred it needs to sell luxury, based on what this cohort believes luxury to be. “It’s really a generational shift in regards to really what is luxury today,” Harris says. Gen Z currently makes up 41 per cent of Alo’s customer base.
If it’s Gen Z Alo is targeting with this launch, why not go the Coach direction, targeting younger consumers with luxe, but more affordable bags in the sub-$1,000 range? Alo wanted Italy-level quality, which comes with Italy-level prices, says Harris. The same logic is already applied to its clothing: “We could make leggings for less, but they wouldn’t be of the [same] quality or technical fit.”
Plus, based on learnings from Alo Atelier collections (Alo’s high-end, pricier line that the brand launched three ago), Harris is confident that a subset of Alo customers can afford higher-ticket items. Revenues from the line grew 600 per cent year-on-year in 2025, following 93 per cent growth the year prior. “Our community, we believe, is already carrying some of the name-brand bags, and they would prefer to carry an Alo bag — especially one that is more in alignment with and based on modern day luxury, as opposed to luxury of what mum or grandma had,” he says.
Harris is right about the wealth, even if the desire remains to be seen. There’s certainly a subset of young Alo customers who can afford to buy luxury. The Alo-toted woman with the $200 a month Erewhon membership is not an uncommon sighting in LA.
With its leather bags, Alo isn’t targeting reach. The initial in-person-only release is small, and the handbag offering will remain scarce. Certain colourways will be produced once and never again, and prices will rise each year. The goal is for demand to exceed supply. “Alo is a social and digital brand, but we’re changing the way we come to market with this category specifically because we want the customer to come in and hold the bag, see the craftsmanship, the feel of the leather,” Harris says. In this, though the CEO insists Alo is offering something different, the strategy is certainly borrowing from the traditional luxury playbook.
The Gen Z tilt is also evident in the crystal charms that each bag will come with. Each bag comes with a set crystal, but they’ll also be sold separately for consumers to mix and match. They infuse a little more wellness energy into the product (each symbolises a different intention), while tapping into the next generation’s affinity for chaotic customisation. “Kendall Jenner is carrying the bag not with one crystal, but multiple crystals,” Harris offers as an example. “There are different ways that people are going to be personalising or accessorising these bags for their own [style] to differentiate it as well.”
A win-win in the awareness stakes
There are more luxury launches in the pipeline. “Soon, you’ll see eyewear made in Japan,” Harris says. He also confirms there is fragrance on the way.
From here out, Alo’s new stores will be designed for “a more luxury experience”, Harris says, with more high-end ready-to-wear offerings on display. The brand will continue to shift in this direction as its core consumer grows up and seeks out higher quality (and, therefore, higher priced) options. The brand is currently building a seven story store in Paris’ Marais district, alongside another Paris store right across from the Louis Vuitton hotel on the Champs-Élysées that’s set to open in 2026.
Harris is also eyeing luxury summer destinations. “If you go to Capri or Saint-Tropez or Porto Cervo next year, there will be Alo stores in all of these locations,” he says. There’ll be beach club activations, like Alo did in Bodrum this year, and, later down the line may well come resorts, he adds. (They’ll all carry Alo Atelier’s summer line.) But for now, the handbags are Alo’s first serious marker of its luxury ambitions.
As consumers become jaded by the ever-increasing prices of heritage brands, perhaps they will be swayed by a fresher offering. But, given 46 per cent of consumers say a brand’s history or heritage is what attracts them to purchasing luxury fashion, Alo will have some convincing to do.
Harris doesn’t expect everyone to be on board with the push up market. But he does expect everyone to be talking about it. “There’s going to be a lot of energy and a lot of excitement around this in both directions,” the CEO says. He anticipates that some consumers will love it, while others won’t approve. But odds are, the latter camp will still have Alo leggings in their closet. “The conversation, whether it’s ‘Alo is great’ or ‘Alo shouldn’t be doing this’, either way, it’s a benefit to Alo,” Harris says.
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