Kering H1 2026: Gucci Racing and the New Currency of Desire

Six months into the thirty-six the recovery was given, Luca de Meo has said what a decade of price rises cost, and Kering’s half-year shows what the group acquires in their place: relevance, material and time.

Luca de Meo, chief executive of Kering since September 2025, reported first-half 2026 revenue of 7,220 million euros on 28 July 2026, with a return to growth in the second quarter. Kering pushed prices past the point where volume followed, de Meo said, and the group now draws its growth from cultural relevance and material-anchored categories, from Gucci’s Formula One title partnership to twenty percent growth at Kering Jewelry. The price-led decade ends in this half-year.

This chapter tests the method of our ReconKering Dossier against the first half-year in which Kering has applied it.

On the evening of 28 July 2026, presenting Kering’s first half-year results to analysts, Luca de Meo said the sentence the luxury industry has spent two years walking around. “In some categories we kind of went too far and played with the elasticity,” said the chief executive, who has led the group since September 2025 and spent the five years before that at the head of Renault. “The elasticity was not exactly linear, it was exponential.” A decade of rising prices had been losing buyers at an accelerating rate, and one of the large groups put that arithmetic on the record.

The recovery de Meo runs was given thirty-six to forty-eight months when he presented it in Florence in April, and the six months now on the books show what a group does with time once price has stopped supplying the growth. Kering is acquiring cultural relevance at a scale it has never acquired, and it draws its margin increasingly from the categories whose value sits in the material. The heaviest of those acquisitions run through Gucci, under a plan called Rinascimento, the Italian word for rebirth set over a house founded in Florence in 1921. The most visible of them carries a fine irony: the man who left the car industry for luxury has signed his new house onto a racing car, and it is the very team he renamed Alpine at Renault in 2021, which from 2027 competes as Gucci Racing. Group revenue reached 7,220 million euros, one percent above last year on a comparable basis, and second-quarter revenue of 3,652 million euros returned all eleven houses together to growth.

Luxury pricing: the price now follows the wish

The decade that ends here had a simple mechanism. Roughly eighty percent of the industry’s growth between 2021 and 2025 came out of price rather than volume, on the figures in The State of Fashion 2026, and the aspirational buyer left across the same years, the departure that runs through this magazine as the middle class shift.

De Meo built his plan for the years after that mechanism. Kering assumed from the start a scenario in which inflation would no longer cover inefficiency, he said, because the price increases available a few years ago are available no longer. What replaces them is a reversal of the relationship between the price and the wish. “We are very much determined in trying to align pricing to intention to buy desirability,” de Meo said. For a decade the price tested how much the buyer wanted the object. Now the wish sets the price.

The correction runs through the whole group at once. Gucci is competitively priced on new product, several items across the houses have been repositioned, and the group is withdrawing from the off-price practices it tolerated in easier years. “We have to protect full price,” de Meo said, and the figures bear the discipline out. Neither the quarter nor the half-year came from discounted sales, according to Jean-Marc Duplaix, Kering’s chief operating officer and chief executive of Kering Jewelry, with full-price sales growing robustly across the board in the second quarter and the outlet reduction announced in Florence continuing.

What earns a price, in de Meo’s account, is the object itself. “We are in the luxury market, so we are here to sell dreams,” he said, and the route to pricing one runs through the product. “We have to come up with very competitive products, very high quality product, very creative products at the right pricing.” His closing line on the subject was the flattest and the most consequential of the evening. “The market will not necessarily give us the comfort of turning our problems into price for the customer.”

Gucci Rinascimento: relevance takes the place of the price rise

A group that no longer raises prices needs another source of desire, and the half-year shows Kering purchasing one. From the 2027 season the team races as Gucci Racing Alpine Formula One Team, in Gucci colours, the first title partnership a luxury house has held at the top level of motorsport, at an estimated fifty to sixty million dollars a season on The Race’s reading of the three-year agreement. “Gucci Racing is more than a presence on the grid,” said Francesca Bellettini, President and Chief Executive Officer of Gucci. “It is an expression of who we are and where we want to take the brand.”

The racing car stands in a row of purchases of the same kind. The Gucci Core Cruise show in Times Square finished first worldwide in earned media value among fashion shows this season. Gucci Monte Carlo ran as a campaign and a high-end activation. The exclusive beauty licence with L’Oréal was signed on 7 July, a full year ahead of Kering’s own schedule. “These initiatives are different in nature, but they reflect the same objective,” de Meo said, and the objective is desirability, cultural relevance and reach into new audiences.

Rinascimento gives that objective its structure, in five parts: rebuilding desirability, product architecture, an execution plan, a productive network with a rebalanced geographic footprint, and quality and pricing under the heading of rebuilding trust and value. “Our ambition is to translate creativity into desirability,” de Meo said, and the translation runs through product, merchandising, pricing, architecture, marketing and retail excellence working as one coherent engine. That is the platform logic he brought into Kering applied to the softest part of the business.

The commercial answer arrives after the cultural one, by design. La Familia reached stores in January, the Pre-Fall Generation collection followed in April, and Primavera arrived in the first stores on 15 July with the campaign starting at the end of August. “The real first complete collection is actually hitting the stores right now,” de Meo said. “Rebuilding brand desirability takes time.” His confidence rests on the size of the audience still watching. “Gucci is an incredibly popular brand. All the eyes are on Gucci, but when it turns positive, everybody will actually realise what’s going on, because everybody is looking at it.”

Bottega Veneta: momentum strong enough to hand over

One house in the portfolio shows what the others are working towards, a name whose desire never depended on the price story. Bottega Veneta accelerated across nearly all regions in the second quarter and remains one of the strongest growth engines in the group, on leather goods led by the mini Andiamo, the best-selling bag across all regions and a success in China, alongside the Barbara and the Madison from Louise Trotter and a mycelium line entering men’s small leather goods.

Its cultural acquisitions run through institutions rather than platforms. Partnerships with the Bangkok Kunsthalle in Thailand and the Leeum museum in Seoul place the house inside the cultural infrastructure of the region whose demand, in de Meo’s description, runs towards craftsmanship, exclusivity and cultural relevance.

Romain Spitzer arrives as chief executive on 1 September, from LVMH Beauty. “His mission will be to build on the house’s exceptional momentum and accelerate this success story,” de Meo said. The house that needs the least repair receives the most unexpected appointment, and the reasoning behind that pairing has its own chapter in this dossier.

Kering Jewelry: the margin settles in the material

The clearest measure of where value now forms sits outside fashion. Kering Jewelry grew twenty percent on a comparable basis to 521 million euros and doubled its recurring operating income to 32 million, lifting the margin from 3.5 percent to 6.2 percent, with Japan up sixty percent and Asia Pacific up twenty-six. Boucheron reached record levels on the extension of its Quatre line through Quatre XS, Pomellato took its case to the Palais de Tokyo and grew on Japan and North America, and Qeelin holds the intersection of Chinese culture and contemporary fine jewellery with particular strength in South Korea. The wager on jewellery is paying earlier than the record suggested it would.

Kering Eyewear turned 965 million euros of revenue into 222 million of recurring operating income, a margin of 23.0 percent against 20.1 percent a year ago, driven by Cartier and Bottega Veneta at double-digit growth and by the first Valentino collection, launched with events in Milan and New York. Brioni completes the picture at the smallest scale and the highest altitude: its Maestri bespoke service grew more than thirty percent year on year and now reaches close to a quarter of the house’s store sales, a business that sells measurement, cloth and hours. Gold, stones, lenses and tailoring hold their value without a price narrative attached, and that is where the group’s margin now grows fastest.

US luxury market: the hourglass settles the bill

The buyer who paid for the price decade has gone, and the buyer who remains was made by asset prices. North America grew on a wealth effect that benefits the whole sector globally, Kering’s chief operating officer Jean-Marc Duplaix said, and the encouragement specific to Gucci came from the markets where brand equity stayed sound. In the United States, Gucci’s brand perception held high through the difficult years, and the new collections produced an immediate effect there, against markets where the image absorbed more damage. Retail revenue in North America grew ten percent across the half.

American clients grew at a high single-digit rate at home and while travelling. Korean and European clients turned positive in the second quarter, Japanese and Middle Eastern clients improved, and Chinese clients improved sequentially from the first quarter. The buying concentrates where asset prices have risen, which is the shape of the hourglass economy. LVMH read the same pattern a day earlier, growing where wealth is created.

Kering China: relevance is built inside the market

China is the one market where Kering spends more rather than less, and the spending follows the same logic as the racing car and the museums, applied to a market that resists purchased visibility. De Meo went there the week before the results with his teams and launched an action plan built on local relevance across product, communication, marketing and retail. “Our priority is simple,” he said. “Put the client back at the centre of everything we do.” He returns in November with the team to review the first tangible signs of progress.

“China is evolving rapidly and is becoming more selective, more local and more experience driven,” de Meo said. “In this environment, success is increasingly determined by desirability, relevance and execution.” The group has its own record to correct there, and he said so, describing the need to clean the stable of unorthodox practices tolerated in the past. What lies on the other side is large. “We deserve a bigger market share. Naturally, we should be better than where we are.”

Kering Craft is the acquisition shaped for this market: a residency programme with Shanghai Fashion Week supporting ten promising Chinese designers, which places the group inside the domestic creative conversation. The store ledger follows the same choice. Kering Jewelry opened four net stores in Asia Pacific and two in Japan across the half, while Fashion and Leather Goods concentrated its network by thirty-one across the same region.

Kering store closures: the network pays for the turn

Every acquisition is funded by something the group has released. Kering ended June with 1,635 directly operated locations, after eighty-four net closures in six months and seventy-five across 2025, roughly five percent of the entire network gone with no particular mark on the half-year result. “Store optimisation is not only about reducing our footprint,” de Meo said. “It is also about upgrading, renovating and elevating our most strategic locations.” The programme announced in Florence runs to 250 closures, and the pace holds into 2027. “It’s not a promise that stays up in the air. It is real.”

The same discipline runs through every line beneath revenue. Operating expenses fell five percent to 4.2 billion euros, and Kering’s chief financial officer Armelle Poulou confirmed a full-year reduction where the group had guided in January to holding them flat. Recurring operating income held at 921 million euros for a margin of 12.8 percent, three hundred basis points above the second half of 2025. Net financial debt fell to 3,324 million euros from 8,039 million at the end of 2025, taking the ratio to adjusted recurring EBITDA from 3.4 times to 1.4 times. Net income attributable to the group reached 189 million euros after 223 million of non-recurring charges and an effective tax rate of 48.8 percent.

Production itself was reduced. The billion-euro inventory reduction committed for 2026 remains on track, and de Meo compressed his position into three words. “I hate stocks. We will have to design a machine that is different. Right now we are driving a machine very, very well.” Kering took brave decisions on cutting production for the year, well beyond a few percentage points, and Gucci is integrating faster replenishment cycles that require a re-engineering of the industrial process and of the supplier ecosystem around it.

Kering platform: the Rebuild phase arrives early

The plan presented in Florence placed the shared group platform in the Rebuild phase, fully active by the end of 2028. It is operational now. The platform gathers technology, client, industrial, sustainability and support functions beneath the houses, industrial hubs are forming for selected activities including belt manufacturing and bag cutting, and Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga and Saint Laurent already draw on selected Gucci industrial assets. Poulou described how the inventory target was reached the same way, by teaming people from the different brands to benchmark practices against each other and settle on one process built from the best of each.

Augmented Kering sits over the platform. “We follow the money. We follow the product. We follow the client,” de Meo said, repeating the slogan he gives his people, and those three are where the technology can raise productivity and perhaps more than double the group’s speed. “We are not starting from a blank page.” A single cloud-based data platform is running, with digital twins across clients, products and supply chain, advanced planning and inventory tools deployed, and AI agents to follow across selected processes. The Material Innovation Lab holds more than 11,000 materials for the houses, of which 3,700 are non-leather alternatives.

Kering outlook: three of four houses answer early

The year ahead stays uneven by de Meo’s own reading. The third quarter runs flat against a harder comparison. “I don’t think it’s going to be linear,” he said. “We are people who are there to fix problems, find solutions and overcome the challenges.” Armelle Poulou confirmed the second-half margin will exceed the 12.8 percent of the first. Saint Laurent returned to growth across the half and accelerated in nearly all regions, with Anouck Duranteau-Loeper newly in charge of product, while Balenciaga works through its creative transition on leather goods that held double-digit growth, after a summer haute couture collection de Meo described as proof of genuine cultural authority and creative legitimacy.

In May, de Meo set four of his houses a clock that runs to April 2028: make money, or leave the system. Three of the four are answering inside the figures. Brioni sells its bespoke to a quarter of its store customers, Pomellato grows on Japan and North America, Ginori 1735 adds double-digit growth. The fourth is Alexander McQueen, the house where this dossier began, twenty stores lighter and returned to its British tailoring identity under Gianfranco D’Attis. It gives its answer in September, on a runway in London.

Where each house lands once price has stopped doing the sorting is written in the luxury brand pyramid. The half-year opened with an admission and closes on the exchange behind it. Kering has shown it can be run. The market now decides what it is willing to want.

Read this chapter in context in the complete ReconKering Dossier on Kering’s transformation strategy.

Continued Reading

• The Weave, the Scent and the Fiat 500: Why Kering Sent a Perfumer to Bottega Veneta
• Il Codice della Rinascita: Italian Fashion Between the Hourglass and a New Renaissance
• Kering ReconKering: The Value of Time

Sources

1. Kering, 2026 First-Half Results presentation, 28 July 2026, with Luca de Meo, Jean-Marc Duplaix and Armelle Poulou. kering.com
2. Kering, 2026 First-Half Report. kering.com
3. Alpine Formula One Team and Gucci, title partnership announcement, 27 May 2026. alpinef1.com
4. The Race, reported value of the Gucci Racing Alpine partnership, May 2026.
5. The State of Fashion 2026, on the share of industry growth generated through price.
6. Kering, Romain Spitzer appointed CEO of Bottega Veneta, 15 July 2026. kering.com

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