Unpacking Kering’s Earnings

Fashion

Today, Kering, the luxury conglomerate that owns Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, and Bottega Veneta, among others, reported its first quarter earnings, and the picture of the luxury industry it paints is even more dire than many thought. Overall sales are down by 14%, Gucci’s sales for the first three months of 2025 are down by 25%, as Kering’s biggest brand flounders in the wake of a creative director reshuffling. At Yves Saint Laurent, its second biggest brand, sales are down 9%. Frustratingly, Kering does not break out Balenciaga’s earnings, as it lumps them into “Other Houses,” which include McQueen, Brioni, and a handful of jewelry brands they own. But Kering dropped a couple of hints in its earnings report.

OUTLAWS: Fashion Renegades Of Leigh Bowery’s 1980s London

Fashion

That burst of angry, youthful energy unleashed on London streets in 1976 called punk indelibly changed the trajectory of nightclubbing forever. For about eighteen months, sartorial individuality reigned for those initial participants. Although Westwood and McLaren’s SEX and Seditionaires boutique provided expensive garments infused with the spikily subversiveness forever associated with punk, DIY styling rose like a rocket within those months with a slew of customization ideas utilized to express disaffection, nihilism and sexual deviation.