Last year, traditional luxury brands struggled to keep the attention of aspirational shoppers, and it was their lower-priced counterparts that swooped in to fill the gap. The formerly squeezed middle of the market — sitting below pure luxury labels but above mass-market brands — was able to capitalise on luxury’s ever-growing prices and perceived lack of innovation. Tightening consumer budgets also played a part. While this segment of the market may be both crowded, competitive, and impacted by the wholesale market’s ongoing woes, its savviest brands are generating renewed desire from customers by offering well-designed products at a fraction of the prices of luxury.
Using BoF Insights Brand Pulse, a new tool to measure fashion brand performance developed in partnership with Quilt.AI, we identify the brands that stepped up their online engagement strategies in 2025 and won over shoppers.
What Are the Top Contemporary and Accessible Luxury Fashion Brands in 2025?
| Overall Brand Pulse Score | Discoverability | Identity | Value | Connection | Love | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sézane | Jacquemus | Sandro | Max Mara | Sézane | Sézane |
| 2 | Frame | Aritzia | Aritzia | Tommy Hilfiger | Max Mara | Staud |
| 3 | Staud | Toteme | Rag & Bone | Toteme | Coach | Rag & Bone |
| 4 | Jacquemus | Ami Paris | Staud | Frame | Frame | Reformation |
| 5 | Reformation | Diesel | Reformation | Theory | Reformation | Frame |
| 6 | Coach | 3.1 Phillip Lim* | Toteme | JW Anderson* | Staud | Marc Jacobs |
| 7 | Rag & Bone | Sandro* | Maje | Staud* | Tory Burch | Ganni |
| 8 | Sandro | Polène | Frame | Tory Burch | Polène | JW Anderson* |
| 9 | Toteme | Golden Goose* | Lemaire | Self-Portrait | Ralph Lauren | Self-Portrait* |
| 10 | Polène | Ralph Lauren* | JW Anderson | Rag & Bone | Sandro | Toteme |
(*Tied position)
Source: BoF Insights Brand Pulse, 2025 assessment
How Is Brand Pulse Measured?
BoF Insights Brand Pulse examines fashion brand performance on social media, search and AI chatbots across five dimensions:
1. Discoverability: How frequently do people find the brand via social media algorithms, AI and search?
Measures: Social engagement rate (as a driver of algorithmic visibility), consistency and distinctiveness of LLM knowledge of brand, search volume and change over time
2. Identity: How clear are the brand’s values and how closely do people align with them?
Measures: Consistency of brand values in owned media, alignment of values between owned and earned media, clarity and consistency of values associated with the brand by LLMs
3. Value: How do people rate the brand’s price-quality equation?
Measures: Frequency of price and quality mentions, sentiment of price and quality mentions
4. Connection: How much do people engage and resonate with the brand?
Measures: Share of likes in earned media relative to category, share of positive sentiment in earned media, share of LLM recommendations
5. Love: How strongly do people express emotional attachment to the brand?
Measures: Ratio of comments to likes, strength of positive earned media and average LLM search rank
The five dimensions condense data from brand-owned and user-generated content across TikTok and Instagram, as well as data from Google Search and leading large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, into scores from 0 to 100. The overall Brand Pulse score is an equally weighted average of the five dimension scores. Each dimension score is an equally weighted average of monthly performance in that dimension throughout the year.
The results show the top 10 ranked contemporary and accessible luxury brands out of a total of 36 brands assessed for the full calendar year 2025, revealing the top 10 by each dimension as well as top 10 by overall Brand Pulse score. To categorise brands in this segment, we assessed the prices of three consistent SKUs (a jacket, bag and shirt) in 2025 and grouped brands by price. Our methodology focused on the biggest brands in the segment by revenue and/or volume of fashion conversation online. (Data for the full set of brands is available on an ongoing basis via the BoF Insights Brand Pulse tool, as we continue to expand coverage with new brands.)
Sézane Leads with French It-Girl Appeal
Parisian label Sézane is a stand-out on social media. As well as leading the overall contemporary and accessible luxury BoF Insights Brand Pulse ranking, Sézane ranks first in both the Connection and Love dimensions. This means it is one of the most engaged with and emotionally resonant of the brands assessed.
On Instagram and TikTok, a large share of Sézane’s earned media is from unboxing content from customers and content creators and videos praising the brand’s bohemian, romantic style.
Knitwear (such as the popular Emile and Gaspard cardigans) and outerwear (like the brand’s classic trench coats) are Sézane customer favourites online. Common discussion threads focus on the brand’s high perceived quality and timeless style that works across everyday contexts such as work, motherhood, errands or travel.
Unlike many brands whose social media engagement mostly consists of low-effort likes or emoji comments, Sézane fans (or “Sézanettes”) engage in high-effort displays of brand advocacy in user-generated content, such as in outfit transition videos where customers “snap” on products to create a full Sézane look.
Sézane stores are styled as “apartments” — intimate spaces where customers are encouraged to linger and engage with one another — and new releases are dropped on a regular basis to generate community hype. This is reflected in the online conversation, where customers repeatedly reference collection drops and new arrivals. Though it can be overused in the industry today, Sézane shows that the drop model still has legs in getting customers excited.
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Jacquemus Trades on Buzz
Viral, social media-focused marketing is at the core of Jacquemus’ digital engagement strategy. The brand’s ability to cut through culturally is reflected in its top Discoverability score, which is 35 points higher than the average of all contemporary brands assessed and is driven by its social media performance. The Discoverability score is adjusted by follower size, so a bigger following on social media does not necessarily mean better discoverability.
Known for its quirky, unexpected digital campaigns that pack an emotional punch, the brand has a unique approach to brand storytelling that made its owned social media content a hit with customers in 2025. Light, unexpected content such as pranks and behind-the-scenes clips add humour and shareability, while celebrity appearances from faces like Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Tyla drove engagement.
When it comes to earned media from customers and content creators, Jacquemus’ bags are at the centre of much of the conversation. Some bags are featured repeatedly, especially Le Chiquito, Le Bambino and newer launches like Le Valérie, positioning bags as the main entry point for engagement.
Sandro’s Consistent Brand Values Stand Out on Social Media
Meanwhile, Sandro ranks top in Identity, reflecting its focused and consistent communication of brand values on social media. Emitting original French-girl cool (the brand, part of the SMCP group, was founded in Paris in 1984), Sandro trades on the country’s style authority and projects elegance, sophistication and confidence, according to our analysis of the brand’s values in owned media. Many of these values are repeated by customers and content creators when they post about the brand, driving up its Identity score and acting as a flywheel for the brand’s image online.
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Staud Shows Stronger Brand Identities Are Aligned with Higher Customer Love
When examining the relationship between the five dimensions of Brand Pulse, there is a positive correlation between Identity and Love for the contemporary and accessible luxury brands assessed (with a 42 percent correlation, which indicates a meaningful relationship in a data set of this kind). In other words, brands that typically have clear, consistent identities that align with their customers’ values are more likely to also have more loyal fans who express brand love.
For example, Los Angeles-based brand Staud performs well in both Identity and Love, ranking fourth and second in these dimensions, respectively. Staud’s narrative coherence (measured as part of Identity) is high, meaning the values the brand projects in its owned content on social media are focused and consistent, which gives it an easily understood and memorable brand identity.
Staud’s Hollywood-esque image has been carefully cultivated by co-founders Sarah Staudinger and George Augusto, who still run the brand and continue to produce it-status bags and shoes and celebrity-favourite apparel. Staud products — like its popular Wally boots and beaded bags — are the subject of a large share of longer-form positive engagements on social media, like outfit-of-the-day videos and reviews. BoF reported in December that the brand’s sales are soon expected to cross $250 million annually and have grown sixfold over the past five years.
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How Does BoF Insights Brand Pulse Work?
BoF Insights Brand Pulse is designed specifically for the fashion industry. The tool can track the same set of metrics for competitor brands, monitoring performance over time to gauge progress and change — helping brand leaders understand not just what is happening, but why.