Last year's acquisition of Yoox Net-a-porter by Mytheresa's parent company sent ripples through luxury e-commerce, but the latest fiscal results from the newly formed LuxExperience Group suggest the house is in order. For those of us who study the intimate architecture of fashion - how garments are bought, sold, and cherished - this turnaround feels strikingly familiar. It mirrors lingerie's own journey from rigid, mass-produced foundations to a bespoke, full-price market that values quality over markdowns.
Consider Net-a-porter and Mr Porter, now being streamlined under Mytheresa's exacting standards. Their gross profit margin jumped from 41.6 to 48.5 percent, a shift away from the deep discounts that once defined off-price luxury. This echoes the lingerie industry's pivot in the 1990s, when brands like La Perla and Agent Provocateur began selling direct-to-consumer, rejecting department-store sales cycles in favor of curated, full-price intimacy. Mytheresa, with its 11 percent GMV growth and a net promoter score that would make any corsetiere proud, is now the blueprint - much as the bias-cut slip became the template for modern lingerie design.
CEO Michael Kliger noted that fine jewelry and resort collections are outperforming, with brands like The Row and Brunello Cucinelli leading. In lingerie terms, this is the equivalent of seeing silk chemises and hand-embroidered bralettes outsell synthetic sets: a return to craft, to pieces that demand full price because they offer full value. Even Yoox, the off-price arm being downsized, reflects the industry's lesson that not every label can thrive on clearance. Lingerie history teaches us that the most enduring houses - Chantelle, Aubade - built loyalty through fit and storytelling, not fire sales.
Geopolitical shocks, from Middle East tensions to tariff talks, remain wild cards. But as Kliger put it, resilience is built into the model. LuxExperience is on track to break even at Net-a-porter and Mr Porter this year, with Yoox following by 2027. It's a slow, deliberate unbuttoning - not a frantic rip. And that, as any lingerie curator will tell you, is how the best things are revealed.
Originally reported by WWD