What to watch: quiet luxury in menswear is still kicking - can it sustain its momentum? In menswear, product quality and approachability are expected to continue driving purchases through the second half of the year. August 31, 2026, 12:01am MILAN - Quiet luxury may be quieter, especially in trending news cycles, yet demand for high-quality, smart-casual essentials has appeared resilient, especially among affluent male consumers globally. Google Trends data show that online searches for "quiet luxury" first surged in 2023, perhaps as fashion customers sought reassurance in response to increasingly chaotic news cycles. After stabilizing, interest jumped again in 2026, with year-to-date searches rising 150 percent. This has helped some specialists outperform the broader luxury slowdown in the first half of the year - and dodge the headwinds throughout the past two-year period of declining and sluggish sales for the sector. Sales of luxury goods at large have shown early signs of a rebound, albeit at a slow pace, but some luxury players were already better positioned. As the Ermenegildo Zegna Group posted a strong set of results for the second quarter ended June 30, the flagship Zegna men's brand saw like-for-like sales jump 16.9 percent to 324.2 million euros. Revenues grew 11.2 percent in the first half of the year at the Italian luxury brand. Similarly, at Brunello Cucinelli, where menswear accounted for 48.5 percent of sales and apparel 83.3 percent in the first half, revenues increased 9.5 percent in the period, as the sales campaign for the men's spring 2027 collection neared completion, the company said. Luxury bellwether LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton's key fashion and leather goods division broke a two-year losing streak, posting a 1 percent revenue increase in the three months to June 30, with quiet luxury stalwart Loro Piana outperforming fellow brands in the division. Smaller, independent players in that league have also benefited from the enduring appetite for ultra-luxurious clothing that does not scream wealth. Last June, Canali's chief executive officer Stefano Canali told WWD that in the first five months of 2026 the brand logged a more than 16 percent jump in sales, while Kiton CEO Antonio De Matteis said the company saw "more than a double-digit growth in the first quarter." Caruso - which earlier this year was acquired by MondeVita Italy Srl, part of Mondevo Group, from Lanvin Group - posted sales of 35 million euros in 2025, with the Caruso brand growing slightly. Its CEO Marco Angeloni is confident there is space for further improvement. "In the next three years, we want to more than double the Caruso brand, and we think we can do that easily," Angeloni said earlier this year. At Herno, first-half retail sales jumped 15 percent across geographies. Ditto for Eleventy, with CEO Marco Baldassari saying the brand is on track to increase revenues by 15 percent this year, on the heels of a 25 percent gain in 2025 over 2024 to 125 million euros, while Moorer, which logged sales of 54 million euros in 2025, up 8 percent year-over-year, expects the 2026 fiscal year ending Feb. 28, 2027, to see an increase of 18 percent to 64 million euros. The muted, easy-to-approach aesthetic these brands have in common has continued to win consumers over. Will momentum hold in the second half? Consumer insights - and executive's optimistic outlooks - suggest it will. Luxury customers are growing more selective, hence the quality of products remains paramount. Claudia D'Arpizio - newly named chair Italy of Bain & Co., global leader of the firm's fashion and luxury practice, and lead author of the latest Bain-Altagamma Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study, written with Bain & Co. partner Federica Levato - characterized consumers as "increasingly more conscious, knowledgeable, picky and choosy, and they choose what they want to buy, with meaning, and this is causing winners and losers." "They have less tolerance toward disappointing products and experiences," D'Arpizio said. That viewpoint was corroborated by the 12th True-Luxury Global Consumer Insights study by Boston Consulting Group and Altagamma released earlier this year. The research found that design, heritage, craftsmanship and timelessness will remain key purchase drivers, for both high-spenders and aspirational consumers. These attributes ranked the highest among all drivers, the study found, trumping almost all the others - including status, logo visibility and the creative director. Quiet luxury players have largely done without the latter or cemented long-standing relationships with creative heads who heavily focus on product development and on building consistency rather than imprinting their own style viewpoint or seek to ride trends. Save for Zegna's Triple Stitch mark and Loro Piana's logoed baseball hat - which has been selling strongly for a good five years since character Kendall Roy of "Succession" sported a logo-less cashmere version in 2021 - logos are fairly absent from these brands' collections, or subtly incorporated, and are hardly ever a lever of storytelling. By contrast, Made in Italy credentials, the use of exceptional fabrics and quality have been key to their unique selling proposition, across all price points. It's no coincidence that Loro Piana and Zegna also boast sizable textile businesses; Brunello Cucinelli has invested in the supply chain, acquiring a minority stake in cashmere specialist Cariaggi, and Herno and Kiton have built and strengthened their vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities over time. Newsletters

Bain & Company announces partnership with Anthropic to accelerate clients' enterprise AI transformations. August 25, 2026 3 min. read Partnership combines Anthropic's Claude models with Bain's deep industry and transformation expertise to accelerate enterprise AI deployment at scale, building on Bain's enterprise-wide rollout of Claude. Bain & Company announced a global partnership with Anthropic, the AI research company behind Claude. With Bain named as a 'Global Premier' partner in the Claude Partner Network, the firms will extend their work with leading companies worldwide to deliver enterprise-wide AI transformations, enabling clients to move rapidly from AI experimentations to scaled, value-generating deployment. The collaboration brings together Bain's extensive cross-industry experience in business transformation and its market-leading capabilities in AI deployment with Anthropic's frontier AI technologies and expertise - combining two organizations committed to responsible, high-impact AI adoption at enterprise scale. The partnership builds on Bain's adoption of Claude through its enterprise-wide rollout to all employees, a key part of the firm's suite of AI platforms and tools, for use in both client work and internal operations as well as existing client programs leveraging the platform. Bain teams are using the wide tooling of Claude.ai, Claude Cowork, Claude Code and MS Office plug-ins for key tasks such as building and testing complex models, conducting research, pressure testing inputs and assumptions, and exploring multiple business scenarios. In Bain's highly successful deployment of Claude, the firm saw exceptional early demand across its technical and non-technical teams for the technology, reflecting strong employee enthusiasm for leveraging Claude's powerful capabilities. In the pilot phase of the rollout alone, more than 7,000 Bain employees were actively using Claude in their work within just a few weeks of it becoming available. Bain's deployment also demonstrated the value of the Claude add-in for Excel, with more than two-thirds of participants in the pilot phase quickly adopting this add-in to enhance delivery of their knowledge work. Bain's rapid Claude deployment provides a best practice example of enterprise-wide rollout to an entire organization, pairing real enablement with effective governance. The enterprise-grade deployment roadmap ensured that Bainies were not simply given Claude access but were also provided with extensive, in-depth onboarding materials, trainings, and webinars coupled with expert support and tracking of users' experience and feedback through ongoing surveys. "Our partnership with Anthropic brings together its frontier AI technology with Bain's deep strategic and industry expertise to help clients turn the potential of AI into meaningful business results," said Philippe d'Arabian, executive vice president and global head of partnerships at Bain & Company. "By bringing Anthropic into our ecosystem, we're giving clients access to leading AI capabilities alongside the expertise needed to deploy them effectively and translate that technology into lasting business value." Bain's work with Anthropic is part of the firm's broader strategy of partnering across the leading AI ecosystems to ensure clients have access to best-in-class capabilities yielding breakthrough business value. For example, across multiple client engagements involving complex, legacy codebases that lack existing architectural context, Bain has helped clients achieve a 30% to 50% productivity uplift - well above the gains of 15% or less typically being reported across the broader market for this category of work. Bain is also continuing to invest in proprietary tools, and sector-specific solutions that help major organizations navigate an increasingly complex and fast-moving AI landscape. The firm's digital teams now include more than 1,500 AI, data, analytics, architecture, and engineering experts. This multidisciplinary team combines algorithmic, technical, and business expertise to solve clients' toughest problems. The group integrates closely with the firm's industry and capability practices to deliver holistic business and technology solutions. "More than 7,000 Bain employees were actively using Claude within weeks of the firm-wide deployment. The speed and breadth of that adoption signal what's possible when the right technology is paired with the expertise to deploy it effectively, and that's exactly what this partnership delivers for Bain's employees and clients," said Steve Corfield, global head of business development and partnerships at Anthropic. Bain and Anthropic are already working together on client engagements across multiple industries. The firms' joint work spans AI strategy, technology modernization, and AI-enabled operations - helping clients translate AI capability into measurable business outcomes. As the partnership develops, the firms expect to expand collaboration wherever the highest-value opportunities exist.

Bain & Company joins the Claude Partner Network as a Global Premier partner. Anthropic and Bain & Company are partnering to help enterprises deploy AI, building on Bain's rollout of Claude to its 19,000 employees. Bain & Company and Anthropic today announced a global partnership to help enterprises move from AI experiments to deployments that produce measurable business results. Bain joins the Claude Partner Network as a Global Premier partner, and the two firms will work together on client engagements spanning AI strategy, technology modernization, and AI-enabled operations. The partnership builds on Bain's own deployment of Claude across the firm, which now serves as a reference point for how Bain advises clients on enterprise rollouts. How Bain uses Claude. Bain rolled out Claude to all 19,000 of its employees as part of the firm's suite of AI platforms and tools, for use in both client work and internal operations. Teams work with Claude.ai, Claude Cowork, Claude Code, Claude for Excel, and Claude for Microsoft 365 to build and test complex models, conduct research, pressure-test inputs and assumptions, and explore multiple business scenarios. Adoption came quickly. In the pilot phase alone, more than 7,000 Bain employees were actively working with Claude within a few weeks of getting access, and more than two-thirds of pilot participants adopted Claude for Excel. The rollout paired access with enablement and governance. Employees received onboarding materials, trainings, and webinars alongside expert support, and the firm tracked user experience and feedback through ongoing surveys. That structure, rather than access alone, is what Bain points to when advising clients on their own deployments. What the partnership means for clients. Clients get Claude models combined with Bain's cross-industry experience in business transformation and AI deployment. Bain's digital teams include more than 1,500 AI, data, analytics, architecture, and engineering experts who work alongside the firm's industry and capability practices. The results so far suggest what that combination can do. Across multiple client engagements involving complex legacy codebases that lack existing architectural context, Bain has helped clients achieve productivity gains of 30% to 50%. "Our partnership with Anthropic brings together its frontier AI technology with Bain's deep strategic and industry expertise to help clients turn the potential of AI into meaningful business results," Philippe d'Arabian, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Partnerships at Bain & Company, says. What's next. Bain and Anthropic are already working together on client engagements across multiple industries. As the partnership develops, the firms expect to expand their collaboration wherever the highest-value opportunities exist. "More than 7,000 Bain employees were actively using Claude within weeks of the firm-wide deployment. The speed and breadth of that adoption signal what's possible when the right technology is paired with the expertise to deploy it effectively, and that's exactly what this partnership delivers for Bain's employees and clients," says Steve Corfield, global head of business development and partnerships at Anthropic.