Fashion moves fast. One minute a brand owns the cultural conversation. The next, it's nowhere.
We've been thinking about which luxury and designer brands have lost the most momentum over the last few years and, more importantly, what it would actually take for them to win it back. These are our honest thoughts. Some of them might surprise you.
Gucci
There was a moment, somewhere between 2016 and 2019, when Gucci was completely untouchable. Alessandro Michele's maximalist vision, the bold GG monograms, the oversized logos, the streetwear crossovers. It felt fresh, exciting and everywhere all at once. Celebrities wore it. Rappers wore it. Everyone wanted a piece.
Then the mood shifted.
As fashion moved decisively towards quieter luxury, understated tailoring, premium fabrics, no visible branding, Gucci's maximalist aesthetic started to look more like a trend than a timeless identity. When Sabato De Sarno came in to replace Michele, the brand pivoted hard towards a quieter, more restrained direction. But the transition hasn't been seamless, and the results have reflected that uncertainty.
The path forward is clearer than Gucci seems willing to admit. Lean harder into timeless tailoring, premium materials and understated pieces that let the quality speak for itself. The GG pattern and oversized logos made Gucci famous, but they also became a ceiling. The heritage is deep enough to build something genuinely enduring. It just needs the courage to let the craftsmanship do the talking instead of the monogram.
Givenchy
If you were anywhere near luxury streetwear in the early 2010s, you know exactly what Givenchy meant. The Rottweiler T-shirt. The star prints. The Bambi. Riccardo Tisci built something that felt genuinely new, luxury that spoke the language of the street without trying too hard. Kanye wore it. Every serious collector wanted a piece.
Then Tisci left for Burberry. Clare Waight Keller came and went. Matthew Williams arrived and the direction shifted again. With each change, the brand lost a little more of the identity that had made it so compelling. Today, Givenchy occupies an awkward middle ground, neither the bold streetwear house it was, nor the classic couture house it could be.
The answer might actually lie in looking backwards. Artists like EsDee Kid have been spotted in the Rottweiler tee recently and when pieces from a decade ago start reappearing organically on the right people, that's usually a signal worth paying attention to. Instead of constantly chasing a new identity, Givenchy should modernise those iconic archive pieces and reissue them with intention. The foundation is already there. It just needs someone brave enough to build on it.
Dsquared2
Walk into any mid-market menswear retailer in the mid-2010s and you'd have been ankle-deep in Dsquared2 denim. The brand had a genuine moment, the distressed jeans, the aggressive cuts, the rock-star energy. It connected with a customer who wanted designer without going fully quiet luxury, and for a while it was everywhere.
That moment has passed. The denim is still genuinely good, some of the construction and wash quality holds up well, but the wider collections have become diluted and hard to read. Too many seasonal variations, too many silhouettes, not enough of a clear point of view.
The comeback is straightforward on paper, even if it takes discipline to execute. Simplify, ruthlessly. Focus on the jeans that people actually want, clean slim fits, straight fits, great washes, and build the brand identity back around that core strength. Dsquared2 made its name on one thing done brilliantly. The path back runs through that same door.
Neil Barrett
Neil Barrett spent years building a reputation for clean, precise, technical menswear. The tailoring was considered, the approach was disciplined, and there was a genuine point of view behind the collections. It wasn't flashy, but it was respected.
Today it's difficult to see where Neil Barrett sits in the market. The space it once occupied has been claimed by stronger competitors who arrived later but executed more clearly. The brand doesn't create the same conversations it once did, and it's hard to see a natural customer for it in the current landscape.
Honestly, this is the most difficult one in this group. A clear path back doesn't exist without a complete reinvention, a new creative direction, a sharper identity and a much clearer sense of who the customer is in 2026. The craft is there. The positioning just isn't.
Philipp Plein
No brand committed to maximalism quite like Philipp Plein. Huge logos, Swarovski crystals, skull motifs, supercar launches and an approach to celebrity marketing that made everyone else look restrained by comparison. For a certain customer at a certain moment, it was exactly what they wanted.
Fashion has moved a long way from that moment. The appetite for logo-heavy, crystal-encrusted luxury has shrunk significantly and even if it hadn't, the brand's image has been affected by controversy surrounding Philipp Plein himself, which makes the cultural climb back steeper than it might otherwise be.
This is the hardest comeback of the group by some distance. It would take a complete repositioning, almost a rebrand from scratch, to win over a new generation of luxury customers who have grown up in the era of quiet luxury and understated design. The brand has the scale and the infrastructure. Whether it has the appetite for that level of change is another question entirely.
Dolce & Gabbana
Dolce & Gabbana has extraordinary heritage. The tailoring, the Sicilian references, the operatic drama of the eveningwear. At its best, there's genuinely nothing else like it in luxury fashion. The brand has produced some of the most memorable runway moments of the last three decades.
But it doesn't dominate the cultural conversation in the way it once did. The 2018 controversy in China did lasting damage in one of luxury's most important markets, and the recovery has been slow. The brand is still producing beautiful work. It just isn't landing with the same cultural weight.
The smartest move would be to stop chasing relevance and double down on what Dolce & Gabbana does better than almost anyone else, exceptional Italian tailoring, dramatic eveningwear and genuine artisanal craftsmanship. That is the brand's real moat. In an era where everything looks the same, something that unapologetically looks like Dolce & Gabbana could be more powerful than it's been in years.
Fendi
Fendi is in a different category to most of the brands on this list. It remains one of the biggest and most commercially successful luxury houses in the world, with the Baguette still one of the most recognisable bag silhouettes in fashion. This isn't a brand that has fallen off in the way the others have.
But the menswear is a different story. Under Kim Jones the collections have been technically precise and critically respected, but they don't create the same excitement or cultural conversation that the best menswear moments from the brand used to produce. There's an audience for Fendi menswear that the current approach isn't quite reaching.
What the menswear line needs is a standout hero product, something that becomes as instantly recognisable as the Baguette is for womenswear. The Italian craftsmanship and the LVMH infrastructure are already there. Fendi menswear just needs a single moment, a product or collection that captures attention the way the best Fendi moments always have.
So Which Brand Fell Off the Hardest?
Every brand on this list tells a slightly different story. Gucci over-extended a trend. Givenchy lost its identity between creative directors. Dsquared2 diluted what made it special. Philipp Plein ran headlong into a cultural shift it couldn't absorb.
But the common thread across almost all of them is the same. A brand finds something that works, scales it past the point where it still works, and then struggles to find the next thing. The brands that avoid this cycle, Hermès, Stone Island, Ralph Lauren, are the ones that have built identities strong enough to outlast any single trend.
The brands that lose the thread are the ones that start chasing the market instead of leading it.