Gucci, Chanel, and the magic of hero handbags

The two most-watched houses in luxury right now didn’t reclaim their heat through discounting or nostalgia tours. They hired bold new creative directors, finessed their leather goods offering, and let social media do the rest. Matthieu Blazy’s debut for Chanel in October 2025 generated $94.8 million in media impact value (MIV), according to Launchmetrics — a 21% increase on the previous season. By Q1 2026, the house had topped the Lyst Index in its first-ever appearance on the ranking — a methodology shift that season also opened eligibility to brands not sold on the Lyst platform. Two months later, on February 27, Demna’s first collection for Gucci landed in Milan. By the time the livestream ended, more than 41.4 million viewers in China had tuned in, and the hashtag “Gucci main show” had surpassed 340 million views on Weibo. The numbers point to the scale of buzz that these two new appointments injected into each luxury house. Chinese Gen Z consumers, historically difficult to retain, are paying attention again. A$ap Rocky and the double C “What Blazy has done is translate the house into a mood,” says Charlotta Cronborg, luxury strategist and founder of Studio Cronborg. “Luxury fashion had drifted somewhere flat, and he has put hope, fun and joy back into it.” That shift is legible in the product. Blazy placed denim on the runway alongside tweed — a deliberate provocation for a house built on the latter. For his Métiers d’Art 2026 film, he commissioned French filmmaker Michel Gondry to direct a short starring A$ap Rocky and Margaret Qualley; Gondry later returned for the Chanel 25 bag campaign, reimagining Kylie Minogue’s 2001 music video Come Into My World with Margot Robbie, Minogue herself making a cameo. On the runway, logomanic pumps and the Maxi Flap Bag emerged as the season's most-tracked products. On Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote), the 25 bag and 26S bag developed dedicated followings; the #chanel26P tag alone drew millions of impressions. And May 2026 saw Chanel report a 2% revenue rise in 2025, reversing a 4.3% decline the year prior. New era Gucci Gucci's reset is louder and less proven. Demna's Milan debut landed hard in China: Xiaohongshu was instantly tracking the Borsetto, a bag whose name is a combination of the Italian for bag and horsebit; the silhouette is now at 1.6 million impressions on the platform, and the Giglio has pulled over 2.1 million. The wider “Generation Gucci” capsule, unveiled in December 2025, introduced the Paparazzo, a slouchy shape evoking the LA-starlet photographs of the 1990s. Chinese ambassador Xiao Zhan sat front row beside Kering CEO Luca de Meo. That image traveled far, and so did the demand spike — 12% the day after the show, according to the Lyst Index. The qualification matters as Gucci's revenue fell 14% over the same period. Chanel topped the Lyst Index in Q1 2026 with two products in the 10 hottest; Gucci re-entered the top five for the first time since Q4 2022 on buzz alone. “Chanel is converting the attention,” Cronborg says. “Gucci is so far only generating it.” That distinction matters more than it might once have because of how the luxury customer base itself has changed. “It went from 400 million to 340 million in three years,” Cronborg says of the global luxury consumer pool, “and the top 0.1 percent now hold 37% of the market’s value.” The aspirational middle that powered the last decade of luxury growth has largely retreated into resale and vintage, or dropped out altogether, pivoting to the premiumization of the high-street labels. What remains is a younger, more visual, more skeptical audience. A common thread among the iconic viral styles is a leaning into practical yet imperfect luxury: the hashtag “bigbagsarethemoststylish” has amassed 371.1 million impressions on Xiaohongshu alone. As consumers turn to luxury for investment, durability, and icons, each luxury house is leaning into their famed house codes, from Gucci’s monogram, to Chanel’s maximalist double C sandals. While Demna’s trademark normcore sensibility has translated well into Gucci, with Gen Z star Fakemink walking the runway with a monogram bum bag, Chanel has generated cool with A$ap Rocky, logomanic pieces, and some tongue-in-cheek memeworthy designs (like the barely-there sandals). Both houses are targeting Gen Z in a bold way. As global luxury struggles to reignite growth, Gucci and Chanel reflect the significance of building brands that combine pop culture, leading categories like leather goods, and introducing new designs that still ooze heritage and could be the icons of the future.

Gucci, Chanel, and the magic of hero handbags

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Gucci, Chanel, and the magic of hero handbags

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag