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- Luxury is leaking
There's a version of luxury that has always been about scarcity and access. What's happening now is something different. The sensibility has detached from the price point and started moving into categories that have never had to think about it before.
Zara collaborated with Bad Bunny and suddenly fast fashion looks like a look book you'd actually browse. Someone opened a grocery store in LA with a massive indoor olive tree, designed to be documented. AP and Swatch made a pocket watch and the first thing people did was clip it to their designer bag. Luxury is leaking into everything. Here's what we're watching.
Zara x Bad Bunny and the end of fast fashion aesthetics.
Zara has been steadily absorbing the visual language of elevated fashion for years, and the Bad Bunny collaboration, guided by his creative director Janthony Oliveras, is the clearest signal yet of where the brand's ambitions sit. Add the John Galliano and Willy Chavarria partnerships and you have a retailer moving with the intentionality of a luxury house while keeping the price point of a high street one.
The contrast worth noting is Everlane, whose entire brand equity was built around a moral promise of ethical luxury, one that couldn't survive the financial reality. When Shein acquired it, the brand had no product story or cultural identity to fall back on.
Oral care is having its Aesop moment.
Luxury wellness moves through the body in waves. Skincare first, then ingestibles, gut health, supplements. Now it's landing on the last unglamourized daily ritual. Brushing your teeth has never had a brand story, so there’s opportunity.
It all feels familiar: a credible hero ingredient (hydroxyapatite replacing fluoride the way niacinamide replaced retinol), objects beautiful enough to live on the counter, and a twice-daily habit already primed for ritual reframing. Köppen started with a copper tongue scraper that racked up 10 million TikTok views and is now building a whole-mouth system designed to live on your shelf the way a skincare routine does. Naturally, they just landed at Laurel Supply. And the category is even expanding into luxury appliances with Zima's Dental Pod adding ultrasonic cleaning where a plastic case used to be.
The store as landmark.
Physical retail isn't competing with ecommerce so much as it's redefining what showing up is worth. Kith's West Hollywood redesign, with its wellness area, art programming, and dining, is part of a broader shift VML is calling "Monumental Luxury." The store is a cultural destination rather than a distribution point. For any brand with a physical footprint, the question has moved from driving traffic to making arrival feel like something.
The same logic applies digitally. KHY came to us following a full brand repositioning with a new identity, new products, and a new world to build around them. The digital experience was made to be editorial in structure, with an invisible grid holding everything together while the layouts break every expectation of symmetry. You feel the intention without seeing the system.
Luxury Grocery Renaissance
Laurel Supply opened in LA with zero social presence, a massive light-filled footprint, an organic butcher, an indoor olive tree, and an $18 orange juice. It went immediately viral, "outbougie'd Erewhon" was the prevailing read. The hypebeast grocery category was already gaining shape (Meadow Lane in New York, Happier Grocery, the slow creep of in-store injectables and chef pop-ups), but Laurel Supply made the pattern undeniable.
Plus the whole space was built as social proof architecture, designed to live in an Instagram feed.
What we’re watching
AP x Swatch dropped the Royal Pop, a colorful Bioceramic pocket watch drawn from the Royal Oak and Swatch's old Pop series. Watch forums spent weeks spiraling over AI-leaked bioceramic Royal Oaks and got a pocket watch instead. The fashion crowd spotted the more interesting angle immediately: it clips to a bag.
Google dropped a Whoop competitor, a band with AI coaching, long battery, no subscription fee, and Fitbit integration. Marketed as “less distraction, more insight,” it’s aimed at people tired of smartwatch overload.
Seoul Tonic, a Korean pear and apple cider vinegar recovery drink, launched through Revolve, landing directly in the hands of fashion's most wellness-adjacent consumer. The K-beauty and wellness overlap isn't surprising. The distribution channel is what makes it interesting.
Lewis Hamilton and Kim Kardashian stopped at a Graffeo Coffee popup in a classic Ferrari. Just the most on-brand candid in recent memory.
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