Max Papiendeck captures Chanel bounty V Magazine Luxury Holiday 2020

V Magazine’s Holiday 2020 issue shares uptown woman, luxury market must-haves. If you’re fortunate enough to shop in the luxury market, then look your best. Aryeh Lappin styles models Chiharu, Eniola Abioro, Heather Kemesky, Julia Van Os and Varsha Thapa in luxury sweaters, must-have accessories and more treasures from the world’s top luxury brands including Chanel, Dior, Fendi, Gucci, Hermès, Saint Laurent. Photographer Max Papendieck(IG) is in the studio for ‘What V Want: Holiday Edition’./ Producer Alexey Galetskiy; makeup by Maki Tyoke; hair by Ben Skervin

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Max Papiendeck flashes ribbed sweater luxury in V Magazine Luxury Holiday 2020

A K-Shape Economic Recovery

With the fashion industry convulsing around how to move forward in a post pandemic world, luxury brands find their sales flourishing in what economists call a K-shape recovery.

Simply stated, the rich and well-educated find their bank accounts overflowing, while the minimally-educated, living ‘hand to mouth’ crowd is suffering worldwide.

What is certain about the rapidly changing marketing and selling strategies of the luxury business, is that online selling is more important than ever.

Max Papiendeck eyes Fendi V Magazine Luxury Holiday 2020

Online Sales Predicted at 35% of Luxury Market Revenue

“Brands made the mental switch from treating digital as 5% of their current business to 35% of future revenue,” Ian Rogers, the outgoing chief digital officer at LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which poached him from Apple in 2015. tells WSJ in To Sell Luxury Online, Deep Pockets Matter More Than Ever.

Rogers, “an exuberant executive known to arrive at some meetings on skateboard, “ writes WWD, will remain an advisor to LVMH while transitioning to his new role as chief experience officer at Ledger, which protects digital assets such as cryptocurrency.

Max Papiendeck images perfect Hermes gloves for V Magazine Luxury Holiday 2020

Bain & Co. agrees with Rogers, projecting that online luxury sales will represent one-third of total revenues for mega luxury monoliths like LVMH.

Neither Bain nor AOC is suggesting that COVID-19 hasn’t created a contraction in the luxury market in total.

The core personal luxury goods market contracted for the first time since 2009, falling by 23 percent at current exchange rates to hit EUR217 billion. The drop is the largest recorded since we have been tracking the industry. The overall luxury market – encompassing both luxury goods and experiences – shrunk at a similar pace and now is estimated at approximately EUR1 trillion.

Max Papiendeck photographs Gucci luxury for V Magazine Luxury Holiday 2020

In their luxury market report issued in Milan on November 18, 2020, a collaboration with Fondazione Altagamma, the Italian luxury goods manufacturers' industry foundation, Bain raises another core must-do for the luxury market:

The turmoil of Covid-19 has been the catalyst for change for the luxury industry, which is on a path to recovery by 2022-2023. Consumer demand for action with purpose and social impact is growing and luxury brands are expected to demonstrate real and sustained commitment to diversity, inclusion and sustainability.

Few fashion websites are as well-positioned as Anne of Carversville to track the evolving mindsets of luxury consumers and the consuming crowd that emulates luxury consumers. Fluff has never been our purpose in life, and AOC has stood for progressive — we called them Cultural Creative values back in 2007 — since our founding.

AOC weeps over the suffering of everyday Americans and ordinary people worldwide in 2020. We’ve written with conscience and awareness about the human community from our 2007 launch until this very day.

Given the crisis our world is in, AOC understands that we inherit an obligation to walk our own talk around the K-shaped global recovery and the critical topics of diversity, inclusion and sustainability.

Max Papiendeck captures Dior and more for V Magazine Luxury Holiday 2020

Approaching our 15th anniversary this summer, Anne of Carversville is more committed than ever to narrating with conscience the stories of high-integrity brands — and calling them out, too, when we see brand behavior disconnects.

We are not the new kid on the block in this endeavor. And while we have been battered this year by some very determined forces to take us down — we do not know their identity — AOC’s response is to not be distracted.

We have work to do. And so do the world’s biggest luxury brands. So do Amazon and Walmart.

As governments falter to help advance the lives of citizens — especially so in Trump’s America — business MUST lead the way with commitments to change.

AOC exists to advance that purpose, not to condemn business. My belief in the entrepreneurial powers of brands and business is unshaken. But we all must change — and do it with conviction. As we wait for 2021 and a chance to turn the page, it seems only right to restate the importance of our mission.

Anne of Carversville is here for the long haul. ~ Anne