Welcome in, today is Monday, October twenty-sixth, and we begin with the Financial Times putting a fresh number on Europe's luxury repricing. The Financial Times reports Europe's six largest listed luxury groups have lost about two hundred fifty-one billion euros of market value this year, the steepest declines at LVMH and Hermès. That account ties the slide to wilting Chinese spending and AI-driven equity wobbles, and it follows our earlier report on the sector's three hundred fifty billion dollar drop. Per the same reporting, Chinese monthly retail sales growth has averaged under half a percent for six months, and a twenty percent tax on income from offshore trusts took effect this week. LVMH said fashion and leather sales to Chinese clients globally fell by a mid-teens percentage. Kering put its decline among Chinese consumers at fifteen to twenty percent. Citi card data in that account has United States luxury spending down at least four percent in July, August and September. Bloomberg has the sector's shares at their cheapest in more than a decade. That is the valuation floor the next round of budget, hiring and capex plans gets set against. Industry reaction leans toward reading this as a market turning more selective rather than simply smaller, with the middle of the pyramid seen as the weakest spot. Also today, Kering shares fell twelve percent after another Gucci sales drop, according to Finimize, with LVMH and Hermès sliding alongside. FashionUnited has the stock at its lowest since July twenty twenty-five and Richemont weakening too, which is what turns a single-brand stumble into a sector read. That reporting cites Deutsche Bank Research saying a turnaround stays difficult without convincing stabilisation at the label. Finimize says Kering is holding to Luca de Meo's plan and accelerating to one hundred twenty-five store closures by year end, and points to weaker Chinese demand and higher oil prices squeezing households. It follows our earlier report on that third quarter print. Per FashionUnited, L'Oréal ran the other way, up four percent. Industry reaction leans sceptical that acclaimed creative direction is converting into sales. Separately, retailers in France and Italy are tallying the cost of a second round of protests. WWD reports stores boarded up windows and shortened hours in anticipation of renewed looting, though most protests remained peaceful. That is as far as the account goes. It follows our earlier report on Lacoste and Louis Vuitton among the brands hit in the first round. Boarded frontage and clipped hours cost money whether or not a window breaks, and this lands weeks out from peak trading, with security cover and insurance terms priced off exactly this kind of repeat. Now to a rule the industry has been working around. NEWS dot a m Style, citing Bloomberg, reports the European Union's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation has barred large companies from destroying unsold clothing and footwear since July, and that from March twenty twenty-seven brands must report how many items they destroyed and why. Disclosure is the part with teeth, because it shows competitors which collections failed. That account says leather goods, including handbags, are exempt, as are some limited editions, and destruction stays permitted when resale or donation fails within eight weeks. It also reports Kering dropped the word prohibited from its latest unsold-goods policy, and that Kering and Burberry declined to comment. Compliance practitioners' recurring concern is that supply contracts still treat unsold stock as disposable. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Goldman Sachs forecasts seven percent revenue growth for major listed luxury brands in twenty twenty-seven, per newKerala, with roughly sixty percent post-pandemic price rises flagged as a cause of the slump. Debenhams Group reported nineteen point seven million pounds of EBITDA for the six months to thirty-first of August and its first pre-tax profit in five years, Drapers reports. John Lewis is putting around ten thousand products onto Deliveroo and Uber Eats for delivery in as little as thirty minutes, according to Drapers. And finally, Drapers has this week's fashion retail people moves, among them Nigel Oddy's exit from American Golf and a new Skechers managing director for EMEA.