The Luxury Footwear Revival Is Underway
Luxury shoe sales were depressed over the last several years, but a Bain & Co.-Altagamma luxury goods study expects improvement in 2026.
Following years of depressed sales, luxury brands are expected to see an uptick in their shoe sales starting in the back half of 2026.
That’s according to the spring update of the Bain-Altagamma Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Report, which also said luxury shoe sales were flat for the first half of 2026.
“Footwear is the category that suffered the most in the last couple of years,” Claudia D’Arpizio, senior partner and global head of fashion and luxury at Bain, said in an interview on Wednesday. D’Arpizio is also a co-author of the report. “We expect a rebound, maybe starting from the second half of this year. It’s a category where there is a lot of strategic focus from the brands and the [luxury] industry overall.”
She said that footwear is one of the categories where “brands have strongly increased prices over time” on both the premium goods and the entry-level items. “So, think of the elevation of sneakers — there’s been proliferation of SKUs and also strong elevation of prices,” she explained.
Because brands have been suffering from depressed sales, she said they are now “trying to recalibrate the pricing, create entry pricepoints and reinforce the category.”
Mirroring recent trends, there is also a revival underway in the heel and dress shoe category. “But I think [it] will take some time to really recalibrate the perception of the equation between prices and value,” she said.
Value is a theme in the latest study, with half of luxury shoppers now consulting the secondhand market before buying new. Within personal luxury goods, where fashion and footwear sit, D’Arpizio said consumers want to buy products, but “they are waiting for the brands to do the right stuff and to price in the right way and [for] the value proposition to normalize. The reality is that the brands are [using] big effort to regain traction.”
The Bain-Altagamma study expects global luxury spending in 2026 to reach 1.440 trillion euros ($1.636 trillion) to 1.470 trillion euros ($1.670 trillion), versus 1.443 trillion euros ($1.639 trillion) in 2025. Personal luxury goods spending is stabilizing in 2026, with the market expected to grow by 2 percent to 4 percent for the full year to 365 billion euros ($414.59 billion) to 373 billion euros ($423.67 billion), versus 358 billion euros ($406.64 billion) last year. The study saw consumer demand soften in the first quarter, with better performance in the second as macroeconomic and geopolitical headwinds partially ease. That improvement expected to continue in the second half of 2026.
Luxury brands investing in the shoe category include Chanel and Hermes, among many others like Dior and Saint Laurent. D’Arpizio said Hermes in particular over the last two years has “over-proliferated the SKUs of shoes and created a very large collection,” reflecting the big investment of luxury brands in footwear as well as effort.
D’Arpizio said investments have ranged from investors such as private equity buying shoe brands to brands investing in the creation of teams to develop shoes or other aspects of product development.
She also said the investor focus for now will probably be more on strategic maintenance of their investments, with fewer acquisition deals as there’s “a little bit of less appetite right now. There has been big successes in the past, but also a lot of volatility.” That volatility in the investment in fashion translates to big successes and also big failures. “Private equity in general is in a phase where the risk appetite is lower, the banks are not financing risky deals and consumer products — in particular fashion — is less attractive than in the past.”
The Bain-Altagamma study also found that luxury consumers are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) to “discover, compare, and validate their purchases of luxury brands.” Half of consumers already use AI in their buying process. About one in four luxury consumers use it for brand and product discovery, while two out of three leverage the tool for product comparison. Nearly all plan to continue to use AI in their shopping journey.
Bain cautioned that brands that “are not building AI-native relevance risk being left behind as consumers increasingly discover products and services, and validate purchase decisions, through AI-mediated channels.”