JB Insights
The State of Fashion:Luxury 2025
McKinsey & Company and BoF Insights report
Global fashion faces challenging landscape
The ninth annual State of Fashion report by McKinsey & Company and BoF Insights highlights the challenging landscape the global fashion industry faces in 2025. With economic uncertainty, changing consumer behaviors, and evolving market dynamics, the year is expected to be a critical juncture for many brands.
Overview
Economic Challenges: 80% of executives foresee no improvement in the industry, and only 18% rank sustainability as a top concern, down from 29% in 2024. Consumer confidence and spending remain major issues.
Key Drivers: Price sensitivity, the rise of dupes, climate change acceleration, and reshuffled global trade create a difficult environment.
Geographic Shifts: Growth engines in Asia, particularly India, Japan, and Korea, are becoming pivotal as China faces economic challenges.
Themes Driving the Agenda
Trade Reconfigured: Brands are diversifying sourcing to align with evolving trade policies and sustainability targets. Nearshoring and political alignment are critical considerations.
Asia’s Growth Engines: While China slows, India, Japan, and Korea are emerging as vital markets for growth.
Discovery Reinvented: AI-driven curation in e-commerce promises to help overwhelmed shoppers navigate abundant choices.
Silver Spenders: The growing over-50 demographic offers new opportunities for incremental growth, emphasizing the need for inter-generational appeal.
Value Shift: Resale, off-price, and dupe markets are flourishing as consumers seek better value amid persistent economic pressures.
The Human Side of Sales: Enhancing in-store experiences by empowering well-trained sales staff can drive demand for physical retail.
Marketplaces Disrupted: Online non-luxury marketplaces face existential challenges, struggling with declining demand and rising customer acquisition costs.
Sportswear Showdown: Challenger brands are rapidly gaining market share, driving competition in the dynamic sportswear segment.
Inventory Excellence: Advances in inventory management and agile supply chains are key to addressing margin pressures and meeting sustainability goals.
The Sustainability Collective: Collective action is essential to meet decarbonization goals despite consumer reluctance to pay premiums for sustainable products.
Looking Ahead
The industry’s outlook remains sluggish, with revenue growth stabilizing in low single digits. Luxury’s dominance in profit creation is challenged by non-luxury segments for the first time since 2010. Brands that act nimbly to address geographic shifts, demographic changes, and technological innovations will find opportunities amid the turbulence.
Growth in the jewellery sector will be fueled by rising demand from ultra-high spenders and continuous investment from luxury houses in technology and expertise.
The new playbook for 2025 emphasizes adaptability, localization, and sustainability, while redefining value and consumer engagement. The fashion sector must innovate, embrace technology, and prioritize long-term resilience to navigate this period of reckoning successfully.
JB Insights
Antistatus and Vandals: Jewellery For The Rebellious and The Defiant
These Brands Are Chasing A Consumer Who Has Grown Allergic To Templates.They Do Not Want Jewellery Merely To Signal Wealth, Marital Status Or Social Approval; They Want It To Signal Taste, Nerve and A Point Of View.
Status? Overrated. Rebellion? Wearable

Antistatus and Vandals are turning jewellery from a badge of conformity into a weapon of self-definition. One is a newly launched statement-silver label with a “Defy the Norm” manifesto; the other is a Mumbai-based avant-garde brand that treats every piece like graffiti. Together, they signal a shift: rebellion is no longer just a mood board—it is the product.
Antistatus: Status, Rewritten
Launched by former VIDA executives Manav Sethi and Pallavi Singh, Antistatus is a statement silver jewellery and lifestyle brand built around a deceptively simple idea: status is not assigned by society; it is defined by you.
The collection leans into biker culture, gothic aesthetics, music and street culture—think handcrafted statement rings, pendants, necklaces, bracelets and belt buckles with enough edge to make a boardroom feel like a back alley. The brand begins with men’s-focused, gender-neutral jewellery, then plans to expand into eyewear, bags and accessories.
Its pitch is not “look expensive.” It is “look like yourself.” Antistatus wants to build a community of people whose identity is theirs to define, not something society hands them with a dress code attached.
Vandals: Luxury with Spray Paint on Its Fingers

Vandals, founded by Vandana M. Jagwani, has been operating from a similarly unruly corner of Indian jewellery. The Mumbai label draws from street art, using jewellery as a way to question the status quo and leave a personal mark.
Its manifesto is explicit: artistic rebellion meets craftsmanship, and luxury is reimagined for “daring souls who defy the norm.” The brand blurs art and jewellery, positioning its audacious designs and sustainable practices as an alternative to safe, predictable luxury.
Where conventional fine jewellery often whispers heritage, Vandals prefers to shout individuality. Every piece is framed as a personal story—less “heirloom in a velvet box,” more “artwork that refuses to behave.”
The New Consumer: Anti-Template, Pro-Story
These brands are chasing a consumer who has grown allergic to templates. They do not want jewellery merely to signal wealth, marital status or social approval; they want it to signal taste, nerve and a point of view.
| Brand | Core attitude | Design language | Consumer promise |
| Antistatus | Defy the norm | Biker, gothic, music and street-inspired handcrafted silver | Define your own status |
| Vandals | Rebellion against the ordinary | Street-art-inspired, avant-garde, sustainable luxury | Leave your own mark |
Both are selling permission. Permission to wear silver that looks dangerous. Permission to reject the idea that polish equals propriety. Permission to make luxury feel personal rather than prescribed.
Why This Matters for Indian Jewellery
India’s jewellery market has long been dominated by occasion-led buying—weddings, festivals, gifting and investment. Antistatus and Vandals are carving out a different lane: everyday identity jewellery, where the purchase is emotional, stylistic and cultural rather than ceremonial.
Antistatus’s ambition to become an India-origin premium lifestyle brand with global reach suggests that rebellion is being treated as an exportable design language, not a passing trend. Vandals already demonstrates that Indian consumers will respond when jewellery carries ideology as well as sparkle.
The Verdict
Antistatus and Vandals are proof that the most compelling jewellery today is not necessarily the quietest. It is the kind that starts a conversation, breaks a rule and makes conformity look like the boring option.
In their hands, a ring is not just an accessory. It is a small, shining refusal.From statement silver with a streetwise edge to avant-garde pieces with graffiti in their soul, this is jewellery for the beautifully defiant.
Antistatus and Vandals are proving that the boldest jewellery isn’t made to blend in—it’s made to break rules, start conversations and define you on your own terms.
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