Paris realigns as cheap fashion takes a dive

Paris Fashion Week is still running, and the business pages are as loud as the runways.

Spring/Summer 2027 shows continue in Paris through October 6, with the last stretch dominated by the Italian houses. Alessandro Michele’s Valentino went deep and bookish; Miuccia Prada’s Miu Miu was the lighter counterpoint, cast with British acting royalty including Olivia Colman. Elsewhere on the calendar, Michael Rider at Celine and Nadège Vanhee at Hermès were praised for making “real clothes feel enchanting,” while Sarah Burton’s Givenchy and Satoshi Kondo’s Issey Miyake drew cover-star treatment from The Business of Fashion. Street crowds and celebrity front rows have not let up.

The bigger corporate story sits behind the Miu Miu show. Miuccia Prada, now in her late seventies, is openly discussing succession as her son Lorenzo Bertelli prepares to take a larger role at the group. That handover is no longer abstract: Prada has completed its $1.375 billion cash acquisition of Versace from Capri Holdings, after regulatory clearances. Capri will use the proceeds to pay down debt and refocus on Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo. Versace’s creative side is already under Pieter Mulier, formerly of Alaïa, who reports into Bertelli. The brief is a turnaround—pull the brand back from markdowns and rebuild demand around a name that is still larger than its current revenue.

The same week, Paris hosted The BoF 500 Gala, where the industry’s newest power list was celebrated during fashion week. The guest list mixed long-standing houses with newer names, a reminder that influence is being redrawn even as the big groups consolidate.

Further down the price ladder, the picture is harsher. Shein, public in Hong Kong since early September, reported a 67 percent drop in quarterly profit to $228 million. Its margin compressed to 2.1 percent from 6.2 percent a year earlier, hit by higher freight and fuel costs and by a sharp fall in European sales after price rises and ad cuts ahead of the EU’s new fee on low-value parcels. The stock sank to a record low, cutting the company’s market value well below its IPO level. Management’s answer is more inventory in Europe and a push into higher price points.

Taken together, the day reads as two fashion industries running in parallel: one consolidating heritage brands in Paris, the other discovering that ultra-cheap air-freight fashion is no longer as cheap, or as profitable, as it looked a year ago.

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