Chanel's Queue, Gucci's Reset, and the End of Long-Term Thinking

May 15. Business of Fashion and System Magazine ran their regular luxury roundtable. Imran Amed and Bernstein analyst Luca Solca on the line, covering Chanel's recent frenzy, Gucci's ongoing reset, and what Solca called the industry's shift away from long-term planning.

The Chanel beat: lines outside boutiques, waitlists for classic flap bags, resale climbing. The house raised prices twice in eighteen months and demand held. Solca noted this is the opposite of what typically happens when a luxury brand raises prices aggressively. The usual pattern is a pullback, not a queue. Chanel is the exception, not the rule.

Gucci: still in transition. Sabato De Sarno's second collection landed to mixed retail response. Solca's read: the house is rebuilding its brand architecture from scratch, and that takes more than two seasons. The work-in-progress label applies. No one at Kering is calling this a quick fix.

The broader signal: luxury houses are no longer planning in annual cycles. Solca said the industry has moved to quarterly thinking, reacting to macroeconomic shifts every ninety days instead of building multi-year strategies. That's a structural change, not a temporary adjustment. When the analyst covering the sector says brands can't see past the next earnings call, that's the beat.

The conversation stayed in business register throughout. No creative-director gossip, no runway analysis, just two people tracking the operational reality of luxury in 2026. Chanel is the outlier. Gucci is the work-in-progress. Everyone else is planning one quarter at a time and calling it strategy.

The piece is paywalled. The headline and guest list are public. The rest stayed behind the BoF subscriber gate.