88-year-old Dame Mary Berry featured in a Burberry campaign this year. Photo / Burberry, Facebook
When the Spanish fashion house Loewe announced the new face of its winter campaign last month, they unveiled an unlikely candidate.
In stark contrast to previous celebrities including the 41-year-old actor Jamie Dornan and The White Lotus star Aubrey Plaza, 39, Loewe chose to feature someone more than twice their age: 88-year-old Dame Maggie Smith.
Clutching Loewe’s best-selling Puzzle handbag, which sells for £2400, the Downton Abbey actress posed against a brick wall wearing a shaggy shearling coat.
The campaign has been viewed as a sign of the shifting sands in the fashion industry, as older consumers who have long been ignored are thrust back into the picture.
It follows years of luxury brands favouring younger, aspirational shoppers, whose tastes have been reflected in lines by brands including Gucci and Balenciaga.
In China, a burgeoning market for luxury, much of the growth in recent years has come from 20-something female shoppers splashing out on designer brands for the first time, according to analysts.
But as the luxury market cools in Asia and cost-of-living pressures weigh on households, brands have been forced to look for new areas of resilience. They have found it in older shoppers.
According to figures from McKinsey, the percentage of baby boomers planning to spend on fashion in the next three months has risen from 19 per cent at the end of June to 24 per cent.
Millennials are starting to pull back most sharply, according to McKinsey, with 25 per cent planning to spend in the next three months, down from 31 per cent at the end of June.
Already, this growing interest in spending among baby boomers is filtering into brand campaigns.
Dame Maggie’s addition at Loewe followed Balenciaga bringing on 70-year-old French actress Isabelle Huppert as a brand ambassador in August.
Massimo Dutti, meanwhile, featured Charlotte Rampling, 77, in its latest campaign, while Burberry opted for 88-year-old Dame Mary Berry.
Yet, luxury brands are not just casting famous older celebrities in their campaigns to broaden their appeal. The change in focus is also playing out on the designs making their way onto catwalks.
Luca Solca, an analyst at Bernstein, says increasingly this is clear through the rise in the so-called ‘quiet luxury’ aesthetic. These are designs that do not feature any garish branding, and instead adopt more muted tones and understated cuts for clothing.
Its popularity has been boosted by a trend for the “coastal grandma” on social media, which includes timeless pieces, white linens and chinos.
“This is an attractive proposition today, because it is the richer consumers spending the most, which – in most cases – can be understood as the more mature consumers,” Solca says.
It is a section of the market which is expected to become more crucial for luxury retailers over the next few years.
Figures from the International Longevity Centre suggest that older people will be spending an extra £11b ($22b) on fashion and shoes by 2040 compared to 2019.
In recent months a wave of fashion houses have showcased “quiet luxury” designs across their runway shows, with luxurious layering and crisp shirts featured in collections for Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Alaia.
One of the most significant changes in the fashion world, however, has taken place at Gucci.
The Kering-owned fashion house for years was a favourite among younger United States and Chinese shoppers, known for its brightly coloured designs and camp aesthetic.
Its popularity among aspirational customers spurred explosive growth before the pandemic hit, with sales at Gucci doubling between 2015 and 2019 to almost €10 billion ($17.9b). However, it has since dried up.
While other designer brands including Louis Vuitton and Birkin have surpassed records for sales, Gucci’s performance has disappointed for the past two years. It posted a 7 per cent drop in sales in its most recent quarterly results.
Morgan Stanley analysts say its underperformance relative to rivals is partly down to the fact that it has “higher exposure to aspirational/younger customers than [its] peers”.
McKinsey senior partner Anita Balchandani says that these aspirational shoppers have “come off the boil”. She says it is mainly the uber-wealthy individuals who are still spending in the face of cost-of-living pressures.
An attempt to reach those shoppers, many of whom are older, has forced Gucci to embark on a major reset. Star designer Alessandro Michele stepped down last year, followed by chief executive Marco Bizzarri this year.
Gucci’s new creative director, Sabato de Sarno, has since signalled he is going after a broader clientele. In his first runway show this September, in Milan, he described the designs as being “inclusive” and for “cool people of all ages”.
In a note published after the show, Citigroup analyst Thomas Chauvet said that the collection should attract a “slightly older” shopper, and “command higher price points”.
However, experts believe it is a tricky balancing act for luxury brands to make this leap, particularly those which have typically been geared towards more younger shoppers.
In Solca’s view, designer labels such as Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli “can very credibly thrive today in that space”.
“Not every brand can credibly move to that space because of a different history and DNA,” he says.
“So, Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli can very credibly thrive today in that space, but brands that have only recently tried to reinvent themselves as demure (think Balenciaga, for example) are still in transition.”
It is far from an easy change to make, with industry insiders warning of the pitfalls of trying to appeal to those older, more resilient shoppers, without alienating a younger crowd.
Andrew Maag, the former boss of Dunhill and Europe chief at Burberry, says companies have to tread carefully if they pivot to this group.
“No one wants to look or be old,” Maag says. “Even the oldest luxury consumers want to be relevant, vibrant, in step with the times and young.”
He said a shift to focus purely on older shoppers would be a “mistake”.
At a time of pressure for even the wealthiest of consumers, Maag says shoppers may be more selective and opt for purchases with a more “timeless appeal”.
Increasingly, brands are finding timeless icons may be the best ones to sell them – to both younger and older shoppers.
Written by: Hannah Boland
© The Telegraph