Fashion in Flux

For the past 25 years, Amazon has trained consumers to prize efficiency, an endless aisle. and frictionless fulfillment—too often at fashion’s expense. As a result, fashion/apparel became a more utilitarian experience. With the winding down of Covid/day-jama dressing, the rise of GLP-1, and return-to-office mandates, the fashion-forward baton has passed into the hands of Macy’s and Walmart. Both are betting that consumers want fashion that provides emotion, identity, and confidence, in shopping experiences that offer surprise and aspiration, all wrapped up in credible value.

Meanwhile, traditional luxury houses, the domain of the designer divas at the apex of fashion’s tiered ladder, have lost their prestige and allure through over-exposure with the democratization of luxury. Raising prices to drive revenues, not attending to quality, and abandoning the crafting of dreams has left many luxury brands hollow. The once Emerald City of luxury has become a mirage. Design divas are now seeking opportunities to be the fashion vox populi—at Zara, Uniqlo, H&M, Gap, and Old Navy.

No More Assumptions

In this topsy-turvy world of fashion, decades-old hierarchies are being shattered. In the past few years under Denise Incandela’s leadership with designer Brandon Maxwell and Jen Jackson, Walmart has added so much design, quality fabrics, and workmanship to its private brands that it is effectively competing with contemporary and mall-based fashion brands. At Macy’s, CEO Tony Spring’s Bold New Chapter and Reimagine program is focused on all aspects of the retail experience, investing in merchandise assortment and presentation, storytelling, store upgrades, and more store associates to enhance service levels. Adding better brands while maintaining its traditional good-better-best brand mix is elevating product and improving the customer experience (and the financials too). This season, American design legends Donna Karan, Michael Kors, and Tommy Hilfiger, along with three up-and-coming fashion designers, launched Macy’s fall fashion season with a multigenerational marketing campaign and inventories to match.

It’s about time! American fashion all but disappeared during the reign of Amazon and athleisure. While Amazon may have numbed America’s fashion sensibility, it created a whole new set of behaviors and expectations. And it challenged the traditional fashion matrix. For much of the twentieth century, fashion moved vertically: Consumers traded up, brands protected their tiers, and department stores translated aspiration for the American middle class. Today, fashion moves laterally.

The historical fashion ladder—mass at the bottom, department stores and mall fashion retailers (specialty apparel retailers) in the middle, designer and luxury at the top—has become less predictable, mirroring the labyrinthine path to purchase. Consumers no longer move upward through a tiered system. They assemble wardrobes across price points, mixing pieces from private-label, mid-market, resale, vintage, and luxury to create their own fashion look. And price isn’t the only motivator; cultural and commercial relevancy (how well a product, service, or brand fits a shopper’s immediate needs, lifestyle, timing, and personal values) supports purchase rationale.

Changing the Paradigm

Amazon’s endless (thus overwhelming) assortment, immediate price comparisons, one-click purchasing, and low-friction fulfillment and returns gradually changed shopping behavior to a utilitarian exercise: How quickly and how cheaply can I get it and return it? Imagination and the dreamy expectation of looking and feeling better got lost in the process. A transactional mentality is fine for batteries, books, household goods, and basic commodity apparel. But this results in dire consequences for fashion shoppers seeking style, craft, novelty, dream, and self-expression.

Making better fashion available to everyone, along the lines of the mantra Save Money, Live Better, is what Denise Incandela envisioned in 2017 when she joined Walmart. Historically synonymous with price leadership and practical basics, Walmart has invested in more persuasive fashion design, expanded private brands, and upgraded presentation. The scale of Walmart is its advantage. With approximately 150 million U.S. customers and 280 million global customers weekly across its physical stores and online ecommerce sites, U.S. sales were $486 billion in FY26 (ended January 2026), and global sales were $713 billion (includes Sam’s Clubs). The core Walmart shopper remains, but the growth opportunity is a younger, more urban, and higher-income customer who historically bought much of their fashion elsewhere. Walmart reported that 40 percent of its fashion customers come from households earning $100,000 or more.

Over the past five years, Walmart has launched or relaunched 15 fashion private brands, investing in design and quality, each with a distinctive point of view. Today, private brands account for more than half of Walmart fashion sales, and three of Walmart’s private apparel lines are $2+ billion brands. Free Assembly, Scoop, No Boundaries, athleisure brand Avia, and introduced Scenario aimed at younger fashion-conscious shoppers are making Walmart a more credible fashion destination and increasing Walmart’s cultural and fashion relevance.

Walmart pop-ups like the recent 1 Bond Street during NYFW are on par, with or better than, many trending mid-priced fashion brands such as Aritzia and Reformation. The challenge is transforming the Walmart supercenters; though vastly improved in the past five years with mannequins and merchandising vignettes, the stores are still huge emporiums that lack emotive fashion currency.

Macy’s Ups Its Game

Under Tony Spring, Macy’s is focused on better merchandising, better stores, better service, disciplined inventory, and selective investment—a return to retail’s fundamentals. And Macy’s enviable ownership of Americana with its Fourth of July Fireworks and Thanksgiving Day Parade creates deep emotional bonds across the U.S., defining Macy’s as an American retail treasure.

The Bold New Chapter strategy is working and the Reimagine locations are outperforming the aggregate. At the Herald Square flagship, the luxury beauty and fragrance floor is looking very Bloomingdale’s, Spring’s former retail transformation.  Under construction are new branded shops for Coach, Tory Burch, Kurt Geiger, and Longchamps.

On the merchandise front Spring has quipped it’s not the endless aisle that consumers want, but the best aisle. To that end, his merchandising team has been busy culling assortments to provide variety, not redundancy, and provide a better shopping experience. This fall, Macy’s Celebrate American Designers collections span iconic designers and America’s new fashion guard: Jonathan Cohen, LAPOINTE and Theophilio.

Luxury Designers Go Mass

While Walmart and Macy’s elevate assortments, services and in-store experiences, a pantheon of designers is moving toward the middle with collaborations and creative director roles with mass and mall retailers. They are following the money as many luxury brands traverse another year of modest topline growth and lukewarm consumer enthusiasm for brands and products. Designers Zac Posen (Gap/Old Navy), Reed Krakoff (Gap), John Galliano (Zara), Claire Waight Keller (Uniqlo), JT Anderson (Uniqlo), Stella McCartney (H&M), Brandon Maxwell (Walmart), Isaac Mizrahi (Target) and more are designing for mass retailers and earning social and cultural (as well as financial) capital. Moreover, creating palpable awareness and demand among a new and younger consumer base potentially seeds future opportunities for these creatives.

The danger is that truism in fashion: Big is the enemy of cool. In the rapid expansion of the global luxury market, Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel have likely hit their near-term peak in terms of brand heat. The brands need a reset that spans innovative product and marketing to recreate the dream for the next generation of luxury shoppers. Maintaining tiers that ladder up from the accessible categories of beauty and fragrance, sunglasses and small leather goods creates a coherent ladder to RTW fashion and exclusive shopping venues—distinctive experiences heavy with emotive value.

Relevance With Value: The New Fashion Hierarchy

The next fashion hierarchy will not be determined simply by who is cheapest, most exclusive, or ships the fastest. Relevance and relatability are the new value equation, and value is in the eyes of the beholder. Design, community, discovery, returns, price, access, and rarity are situational. The winners will be determined by who can combine value with a point of view. After 25 years of frictionless commerce and comfort-first dressing, fashion’s task is to give shoppers a reason to care again. Macy’s and Walmart are newcomers to masstige and look up to the task.