Lanvin Group continues to struggle with declining sales and profitability in 2025. The Chinese luxury conglomerate, listed on the New York Stock Exchange and formerly known as Fosun Fashion Group, owns brands including Wolford, Sergio Rossi, St. John, and Caruso. For the first half of 2025, the Group reported revenue of €133 million, representing a 22% year-over-year decline. Its namesake label, Lanvin, experienced a dramatic sales collapse of over 40%. Gross profit also declined by 26.8%, falling to €71.9 million, while gross operating losses deepened.
The downturn, according to Group management, reflects ongoing weakness in the global luxury market, compounded by “lower wholesale sales in the EMEA region” and the Group’s strategic pivot toward direct-to-consumer sales, which dropped 23%. Lanvin’s performance was a significant drag on the Group’s overall figures.
Once positioned as Lanvin Group’s strongest asset, the Paris-based label fell to third place in the portfolio within one year. Sales for the brand plummeted by 42.1%, sliding from €48.2 million in H1 2024 to €27.9 million by June 30, 2025. Regionally, Lanvin’s sales plunged by over 60% in Greater China and by 47% in Europe. The label’s gross profit dropped to €15.1 million, down from €28 million in the prior year, with a gross margin of 58%.
The Group described this period as “a time of transition,” noting that multi-brand retailers adopted a wait-and-see approach ahead of the debut of Lanvin’s new aesthetic. British designer Peter Copping, appointed as artistic director at the end of 2024, revealed his first collection for the house in January. Wholesale sales dropped by 61.8%. Still, Lanvin Group sees potential in early signs of retail recovery: “Lanvin and Sergio Rossi recorded a strong quarter-on-quarter rebound in retail and online, highlighting early signs of renewed consumer interest,” the company said.
Mixed results across other brands
Sergio Rossi, which also underwent a creative transition with the arrival of designer Paul Andrew—whose debut collection is expected in the second half of the year—saw first-half sales fall by 25% to €15.3 million. Gross margin slipped by 9% to €6.2 million, a shift attributed to a revised product assortment.
Sales at American luxury knitwear brand St. John remained relatively stable, falling just 0.8% to €39.6 million. Meanwhile, the Wolford brand reported €32.9 million in revenue, a 22.6% decline. Menswear specialist Caruso reported sales of €17.6 million, a 10.7% decrease.
Losses deepen as the Group looks ahead
Adjusted gross operating loss (Ebitda) for the Group rose from -€42 million in the first half of 2024 to -€52 million one year later. Gross margin dropped to 54%, down from 58%. According to the company, the decline was due to the sale of off-season inventory during the creative transition, underutilization of production facilities, and changes to product mixes. “Although all brands took steps to improve sales and manage inventory levels, these efforts were offset by the industry-wide headwinds encountered during the period,” the company said.
A focus on rebuilding brand momentum
“In the first half, we focused on operational discipline and laying the foundations for future growth,” said Lanvin Group Executive Chairman Andy Lew, who was appointed earlier this year. “With a new creative direction across our houses, supported by targeted marketing and refined channel strategies, we expect to build brand momentum and increase consumer engagement in the second half. We remain agile and focused on execution, while reinforcing the desirability of our brands and preparing for the recovery.”
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Artificial intelligence (AI) continues its march to transform businesses’/consumers’ lives with customer advocacy platform Mention Me launching ‘AI Discovery IQ’, a free-to-use tool that “helps brands reach target consumers in the new age of generative AI search”.
Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP/Archives
It claims to allow brands to “instantly audit how discoverable they are within popular AI systems” such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.
According to Mention Me, 62% of UK consumers now turn to generative AI tools for product recommendations, brand discovery and comparisons, “bypassing traditional search engines entirely [so] businesses are under pressure to respond to this behaviour change,” said the platform’s CEO Wojtek Kokoszka whose platform works with firms including Charlotte Tilbury, Huel and Puma, “helping marketing teams to boost consumer awareness and sales”.
With AI, it says the modern customer journey, powered by natural language prompts instead of outdated keyword strings, means consumers are 4.4 times more likely to convert if they find a brand through a large language model (LLM).
“The rise of ‘agent-mode’ assistants and AI-driven voice search has pushed brands into a new world of digital visibility. Despite this, most brands have little to no insight into how they appear in AI-generated answers”, said Kokoszka.
AI Discoverability IQ claims to give brands an overall LLM discoverability score, specific details on areas such as technical website elements, content and structured data, and actionable recommendations to improve their AI discoverability.
Its tool generates “measurable, trackable outputs” like AI Visibility Score, brands’ prompt-based results, and a side-by-side comparisons with their competitive set. This means brands “can react quickly to improve their discoverability scores” with Mention Me’s wider suite of products and unique first-party data.
It’s also “innovating and evolving” its platform to include more capabilities, such as the ability to benchmark against competitors, to drive further improvements for marketing leaders in the age of AI.
Mention Me CMO Neha Mantri said: “AI Discoverability is not yet a named practice within most marketing teams; the same way SEO wasn’t in the early 2000s. But when up to 31% of consumers say they’re more likely to trust responses from generative AI than traditional search results, this needs to change. Mention Me is naming the problem and providing a solution at just the right time.”
A host of celebrities and high-end brands have donating goods to ensure Savile Row’s latest annual ‘Pop-Up Crisis’ store will continue to support the Crisis charity event that has so far raised over £650,000 since 2018.
Image: Crisis charity
Across 8-13 December, the pop-up store at 18-19 Savile Row in London’s Mayfair will sell a curated selection of designer clothing, past stock and samples from luxury brands.
Celebs donating goods include Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Naomie Harris, David Gandy, Jarvis Cocker, Louis Partridge, Jamie Redknapp and Emma Corrin, among others, for a week-long event and raffle with all proceeds going to help end homelessness across Britain.
Hosted by landlord The Pollen Estate, the temporary shop is also selling designer goods donated by Savile Row tailors including Mr Porter, Wales Bonner, Crockett & Jones and many other luxury brands from Barbour, Tod’s to Manolo Blahnik and Watches of Switzerland Group.
This year, celebrity model and fashion entrepreneur David Gandy will also be curating an exclusive online edit on shopfromcrisis.com, including donations from his own wardrobe as well as items from friends including Redknapp’s brand Sandbanks, Hackett and Aspinal of London.
Gandy said: “Having supported Crisis for a number of years, I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to curate my own online edit this year with the help of some of my close friends. It means a lot to know that donations from my own wardrobe are going towards such an important cause. Whether you’re looking for the perfect Christmas gift or to treat yourself, your purchase can help make a real difference to people facing homelessness this Christmas.”
Liz Choonara, executive director of Commerce and Enterprise at Crisis, added: “Pop-Up Crisis is such an iconic event in the Crisis calendar and one that we look forward to every year. We’re thrilled to be partnering with the team once again for another week celebrating the iconic craftsmanship and style of Savile Row – with all proceeds going towards our crucial work to end homelessness.”
Specialist outdoor clothing producer Dryrobe has won a trademark case against a smaller label. The win for the business, which produces waterproof towel-lined robes used by cold water swimmers, means the offending rival must now stop selling items under the D-Robe brand within a week.
Image: Dryrobe
A judge at the high court in London ruled the company was guilty of passing off its D-Robe changing robes and other goods as Dryrobe products and knew it was infringing its bigger rival’s trademark reports, The Guardian newspaper.
The company said it has rigorously defended its brand against being used generically by publications and makers of similar clothing and is expected to seek compensation from D-Robe’s owners for trademark infringement.
Dryrobe was created by the former financier Gideon Bright as an outdoor changing robe for surfers in 2010 and became the signature brand of the wild swimming craze.
Sales increased from £1.3 million in 2017 to £20.3 million in 2021 and it made profits of £8 million. However, by 2023 sales had fallen back to £18 million as the passion for outdoor sports waned and the brand faced more competition.
Bright told the newspaper the legal win was a “great result” for Dryrobe as there were “quite a lot of copycat products and [the owners] immediately try to refer to them using our brand name”.
He said the company was now expanding overseas and moving into a broader range of products, adding that sales were similar to 2023 as “a lot of competition has come in”.
Politics8 years ago