Desire moves before the numbers.
Rafael Carlesso is a luxury strategist and analyst. He reads luxury as a cultural system with economic consequences: how houses create beauty and desire, and why the pricing power that comes with them is harder to hold than it used to be.
The question is no longer how to win back the customer luxury lost to price. It is what a house is making and saying to keep the one it already won, and is quietly losing.
KERING
H1 2026 Results
After the Arithmetic, a Pulse at Gucci.
How Gucci narrowed to -2% on fewer doors while the 12.8% margin was rebuilt from cost, and why the €4bn Valentino commitment parked in a footnote quietly spends the deleveraging.
Press
Quoted by Reuters in 2026 on LVMH's sale of Marc Jacobs and the loss of pricing trust with the aspirational consumer.
Cited twice by LinkedIn News in 2026, on Chanel's acquisition of Charvet and on LVMH's first-half results.
Open Briefs
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LVMH: The Margin Held. Desire Did Not.
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Zegna Group: One Brand Carries The Group
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Moncler Group: Funded, Not Yet Measured
About
Rafael Carlesso reads luxury as a cultural system with economic consequences. His work is about how houses create beauty and desire, and why the pricing power that comes with them is harder to hold than it used to be.
Work with me
Two engagement models.
For consultancies, investment firms and family offices: commissioned analysis, Intelligence Briefs and expert calls on luxury houses, categories and pricing dynamics, with contractual exclusivity windows.
For emerging and founder-led luxury brands: strategy built on systematic cross-brand analysis of how the great houses built authority, desire and pricing power.