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At the end of 2023, the business of shopping — the seduction of a glorious novelty, the thrill of having a new joy in a crisp paper (or reusable) bag, the simple act of needing something and quickly or even easily getting it — flew into a tailspin.

Big e-tailers such as FarFetch and Matches changed ownership, the former narrowly avoiding bankruptcy. Phoebe Philo upended the runway-to-retail pipeline by debuting her much-anticipated line not on the catwalk but on a bare-bones e-commerce site. Shein continued its march to global dominance, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/06/28/shein-influencers-trip/" target=_blank>confidentially filing for an initial public offering (IPO)</a>.

And the ever-growing luxury business entered a slump that started in the second half of the year, with Americans shifting their spending away from big indulgences as inflation made necessities pricier. These are what consultants are calling “aspirational luxury customers”: those who do not live their lives in, say, Loro Piana, but rather buy handbags or beauty products or other accessories as gratification, entertainment.

“They are not moving away forever,” says Federica Levato, a partner at Bain &amp; Company who leads the firm’s EMEA Luxury Goods and Fashion practice and who co-wrote a November report on luxury. “It is something that is contingent on that moment of uncertainty.” Rather than retreating from luxury brands, Levato says, they are simply moving to purchasing less expensive stuff.

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Perhaps the most notorious of such customers is someone like George Santos, the felled New York congressman whose alleged use of donor funds to shop at Ferragamo and Hermès got him booted from Congress. (In his December tete-a-tete <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2023/12/17/george-santos-ziwe/" target=_blank>interview with Ziwe</a>, he said he wears Ferragamo loafers and, from Hermès, uses the brand’s cologne and has one of its enamel bracelets.)

Customers who aspire to the life of luxury — and achieve it through products such as handbags and accessories — are now buying items such as perfume and beauty products, which are a growing focus for Hermès, Chanel and other brands. (Hermès, for example, sells a $75 lip balm with a cult following. Another notable minor extravagance: Chanel’s $25 Le Coton: cotton pads for makeup removal with the brand’s logo.) “They don’t compromise on brand. They want to buy luxury,” Levato says. “So, of course, they pass to categories that are more approachable.”

And rich customers are getting better service and products than ever before — “getting really spoiled by brands,” as Levato puts it — as brands open private boutiques for their highest spenders and stage more and more fashion shows around the world that turn the act of consumerism into something like a cultural experience.

It is the customers in between those two kinds of shoppers, though, who present the most intriguing opportunity for big change this year: those who feel alienated by the price increases from the most recognizable luxury names (the Hermèses, the Louis Vuittons, the Chanels), who are growing skeptical of, or even revile, big luxury. (It’s a sentiment that even some high-end designers, such as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/fashion/2023/11/11/jonathan-anderson-loewe/" target="_blank">Jonathan Anderson</a>, are articulating.) Last year, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/hermes-sales-rise-156-defying-luxury-downturn-us-posts-strong-growth-2023-10-24/" target="_blank">Hermès increased its prices</a> by about 7 percent globally, while <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/understanding-the-latest-chanel-bag-price-hikes-and-the-resale-market" target="_blank">the prices of Chanel’s most well-known line of bags</a>, its classic flap, went up 16 percent, with many selling for more than $10,000.

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Their dissatisfaction has been good news for independent retailers, such as Relish, the 27-year-old store in Georgetown known for its fantastical selection of clothes, which just had its best year ever, says owner Nancy Pearlstein. “Our prices are very high,” she says, but pieces from the stoic but pretty French label Casey Casey, or the strange but timeless brand Sofie D’Hoore, feel more reasonably priced compared with the extravagances of European behemoths.

“We’re the bargain bin of the rich!” Pearlstein jokes.

For her customers, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/fashion/2023/08/24/taste-jenna-lyons-housewives/" target=_blank>developing taste and personal style</a>, a concept Pearlstein insists exists in D.C., is a pursuit, which makes the independent boutique the potential power player of 2024. Outline, the Brooklyn-based store of cerebral clothes named for the Rachel Cusk novel, recently launched e-commerce. Stores like Los Angeles’s Maimoun and Just One Eye, San Francisco’s Modern Appealing Clothing and Portland, Ore.’s Stand Up Comedy have gained cult status in the new guard of shopping newsletters that have taken the helm of the traditional fashion magazine’s market pages (Leandra Medine Cohen’s <a href="https://leandramcohen.substack.com/" target=_blank>the Cereal Aisle</a>, Laura Reilly’s <a href="https://www.magasin.ltd/" target=_blank>Magasin</a>, Becky Malinsky’s <a href="https://5thingsyoushouldbuy.substack.com/" target=_blank>5 Things You Should Buy</a>).

“When you spend that kind of money, do you want to see yourself coming and going?” Pearlstein says. The sense of discovery that such a store engenders is like an escape from the homogeneity of big brands.

In the meantime, the global luxury powerhouses are focused on continuing to cultivate more of those antiseptically named aspirational luxury customers. “There is a bit more resilience in this market” than there was just before the Great Recession, Levato says. “The industry is much stronger, and the consumer is much more knowledgeable.”

ASME nominee for reviews and criticism, 2023

University of Pennsylvania, BA in English and art history

Rachel Tashjian is a fashion writer at The Washington Post.

Rachel Tashjian

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How we’ll shop in 2024: Cooler, smaller and weirder