If you're into haute couture, cast your mind back to Karl Lagerfeld's 2014 autumn/winter show. The octogenarian designer transformed the Grand Palais in Paris into a giant Chanel supermarket. Models strutted up and down the aisles popping high-priced products, such as CoCo Chanel Coco Pops, into their baskets. Who knows what Mr Lagerfeld was attempting to communicate with the spectacle - maybe it was just that. But some commentators interpreted the production as a symbol of the democratisation of luxury: that it can be found anywhere and in anything. Whack a Chanel sticker on a cereal packet and you can charge 10 times the price - commercial interest is equally as important as high fashion and that's not something to shy away from, because in today's fast-moving world of the internet and social media, fashion's got a seriously limited shelf life.
To a financially-minded investor, this probably sounds like fluffy stuff, and to some degree it is. But it also goes to highlight some important trends in the luxury retailing sector, which partly explain why the industry has been having a difficult time over the past couple of years - and why it might now be set to bounce back.
Rewind to 2013 and things started to look drab for luxury stocks as sales growth slowed. As the graph below shows, our representative basket of luxury stocks has lagged behind the MSCI World Index and fallen roughly 12 per cent since mid 2013, and by 10 per cent over the past 12 months, driven by the world's biggest fashion houses, including Prada, Kering, LVMH and Richemont - all public, overseas-listed conglomerates home to some of the most exclusive brands in luxury retailing.