Farewell to the “Lao Deng” (老登): Why China’s Old Luxury Is Dead
Lessons from Coach, Miu Miu and the Wuhan “Heist”
Strategy note — MadameChina.fr / CY Capital — April 2026
PART I — A Manifesto for Realism: The Great Replacement
Let’s start by killing a comfortable myth.
When LVMH reports -8% in China, when Kering posts -18% in Asia-Pacific, when Burberry closes its Chengdu flagships, analysts pull out their J-curves and talk about a “healthy normalisation”. Bain and Euromonitor promise a return to “moderate” growth by 2027. These reports are expensive. And they are built on a fundamental methodological error.
The consultants’ original sin: they measure stock shipped, not desire consumed. Euromonitor data aggregates bulk sales, inter-warehouse transfers and wholesale orders — everything that leaves the docks, not what wins hearts. The result is a static, biased picture, produced by players with a vital interest in projecting optimism. A Chengdu wholesaler will never announce that his stock is gathering dust. A regional director will not tell his board that his store is empty on a Saturday afternoon.
The reality on the ground is different. And it starts with understanding who was buying those LV bags and Gucci belts.
The collapse of the pillar: the aspiring middle class
LV, Gucci and Coach shared a common target: China’s aspiring middle class. These managers, first-generation entrepreneurs and upwardly mobile professionals used luxury as a status signal — tangible proof of success in the making. This segment accounted for the bulk of high-end luxury growth in China since 2010.
That segment has collapsed. Not gradually — structurally.
Real estate accounted for 60 to 70% of urban household wealth. Since 2021, that wealth has fallen by 20 to 30% in real terms in the major cities. A middle class that felt rich because its Wuhan apartment had doubled in value over ten years now finds itself holding a depreciated, illiquid asset. The reverse wealth effect (negative 财富效应) is brutal and irreversible in the short term: wealth psychology trumps the bank balance. And in that frame of mind, spending 12,000 RMB on an LV bag is no longer a sign of success — it is proof of irresponsibility.
At the same time, the anti-corruption campaign dried up the transactional gift economy — the substantial share of high-end luxury purchases tied to business people’s networking and entertainment practices. That market is not coming back.
The rejection of the “Lao Deng” (老登)
But the economic collapse is only half the story. The other half is cultural, and it runs even deeper.
老登 (Lao Deng) is a Chinese Gen Z slang term that refers, with biting irony, to the “old geezer” — the middle-aged man clinging to outdated status codes, who wears an LV monogram the way people once wore a military medal. The Lao Deng consumes luxury in order to appear. Gen Z consumes — when it consumes at all — in order to be.
This shift is not a fad. It is a civilisational reshaping of purchase motivations. Chinese Gen Z grew up with national pride campaigns, GuoChao (國潮), and the rise of domestic brands able to compete aesthetically with the West. For them, an LV monogram or a Gucci belt no longer signals success, but membership of a previous generation — the one that used luxury as a social prop.
老登 luxury is clinically dead. What survives is something else.
PART II — The Masters of Resilience: The Rise of Expressive Luxury
Three brands have held firm where others are collapsing. They did not hold firm by chance. All three had, before the crisis, incubated a Gen Z clientele that did not need the aspiring middle class’s status signal in order to buy. When that pillar collapsed, they already had their plan B — without ever having planned it as such.
Miu Miu: Gen Z’s undisputed MVP
The Miu Miu case is the most spectacular — and the least understood by Western analysts.
+93% in 2024. +40% in 2025. In a luxury market in broad contraction, these figures seem to belong to another reality. And they do belong to another reality — the one Chinese Gen Z has built alongside the traditional market, and that nobody in the consulting firms had modelled.
80% of Miu Miu’s customers in China are aged 18 to 28. This is not a clientele captured from a failing segment — it is a clientele built from scratch, on radically different codes. The “Miu-style” — Y2K, rebellious preppy, a midi skirt worn with chunky loafers and a mini bag — became the dominant aesthetic language on Xiaohongshu in just two years. Not because Miu Miu did marketing in China. Because its aesthetic resonated with something authentic in Chinese Gen Z’s visual culture: gentle irony, reinvented nostalgia, and a rejection of conventional adult seduction.
Miu Miu did not target Gen Z. Gen Z adopted Miu Miu. That is a fundamental difference — and it is precisely what consultants’ growth models are unable to anticipate.
Coach: Rational Luxury
| Period | China growth | Reliability |
|---|---|---|
| FY2022 | ~+15% | ✅ Tapestry financials |
| FY2023 | Slowdown, ~+3% | ✅ Tapestry financials |
| FY2024 | Strong rebound, ~+18% | ✅ Tapestry financials |
| FY2025 | +7.5% (USD 970M) | ✅ Tapestry annual report |
| Q1 FY2026 | +22% | ✅ Tapestry earnings call |
| Q2 FY2026 | +35% | ✅ Tapestry earnings call |
The first mistake to avoid: do not compare Coach to LV or Gucci. It is not the same price segment, not the same customer sociology, not the same challenge. The relevant comparison is this one:
| Brand | Group | Average price (RMB) | China growth 2025 | Q2 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coach | Tapestry | 2,500–8,000 | +7.5% | +35% |
| Miu Miu | Prada Group | 8,000–25,000 | +40% | Accelerating |
| Loewe | LVMH | 5,000–20,000 | +25–28% ⚠️ | +20–25% ⚠️ |
| Marc Jacobs | LVMH | 3,000–7,000 | +3–5% ⚠️ | +5–7% ⚠️ |
| Longchamp | Indep. | 1,500–4,000 | +2–4% ⚠️ | +1–3% ⚠️ |
| Michael Kors | Capri | 1,500–5,000 | -20 to -30% | Falling sharply |
⚠️ = industry estimates, not official disclosures
This table says one simple thing: within the same price range, the performance gap is explained entirely by the intelligence of the repositioning, not by macro factors.
Coach made three quiet pivots that changed everything. First, the end of outlet dependence: Coach methodically weaned its revenue off sales and discount channels, which had created the “bought a designer bag” stigma — the perceived devaluation. Next, the China Cool strategy: not superficial China-washing, but authentic cultural co-creation — collaborations with CLOT (Edison Chen’s label) and with Da Bai Tu (大白兔), and a design centre at Donghua University. Gen Z instantly detects cultural authenticity, or its absence. Finally, targeting rational Gen Z: a deeply pragmatic generation that compares resale prices on Xianyu in real time before buying, and demands Quality + Style + Fair price + Decent resale value. The Tabby at 3,500–5,500 RMB answers that equation exactly.
The central strategic insight: LV, Gucci and Coach shared the same target — the aspiring middle class. When that segment collapsed, LV and Gucci had no plan B. Coach had already, almost unintentionally, built a replacement Gen Z base. It is this foresight — deliberate or fortunate — that explains the +35%.
Loewe: the luxury of culture, not money
Loewe occupies a distinct position: the artistic exception. Where Coach plays accessible rationality, Loewe plays premium cultural identity. And in China, that combination has proved explosive.
65% of Loewe’s customers in China are under 30. This performance has three drivers. The IP collaborations — Ghibli (Totoro, Spirited Away, Howl), Shanghai Animation Film Studio, On Running — each generated stock-outs and premiums on the secondary market, irrefutable signals of Gen Z desirability. The appointment of Wang Yibo as global ambassador triggered a 320% jump in Puzzle sales in the month of the announcement — a textbook case of celebrity-to-sales conversion that remains rare at this scale in luxury. And the Loewe aesthetic itself — geometric, deconstructivist, radically different from the logo parade — responds exactly to the 老登 rejection: this is not a bag that says “I have money”, it is a bag that says “I have taste”.
PART III — The Survivors’ Matrix: Store of Value vs Expression
In a deflationary economy where real estate has lost value, rational buying behaviour splits towards two opposite poles — and the brands that survive are those that clearly occupy one or the other.
The “Store of Value” pole brings together Hermès and Lao Pu Gold (老铺黄金). What they have in common: the object purchased retains or accumulates real value, regardless of its use. A Birkin 25 resells at 90–110% of its purchase price on Xianyu. With property wealth depreciating, Hermès is not a luxury brand — it is a financial instrument with a handle. Lao Pu Gold goes further still: its traditional gold jewellery trades at significant premiums to spot gold, combining sovereign aesthetics with a tangible store of value. What the consumer is buying is metal and stone, not coated canvas.
The “Expressive” pole brings together Coach, Miu Miu and Loewe. Here the logic is reversed: the object makes no claim to stored financial value. It claims immediate social value — the expression of an identity, a taste, a cultural affiliation. For this pole to work, two conditions are needed: the object must be socially desirable (validated by peers on Xiaohongshu, worn by Douyin it-girls) and rationally accessible (fair price, enough perceived quality to justify the purchase without feeling frivolous).
The soft underbelly — Gucci, Burberry, mainstream Saint Laurent — is the zone of maximum danger. These brands are too expensive for the accessible expressive pole, too ordinary for the store-of-value pole, too Western for Gen Z, and too exposed to the 老登 segment that has evaporated. They clearly occupy neither pole. In a market that has polarised, the lack of a clear positioning is a death sentence.