Brands shifting tone: performance‑chic
Social chatter flags a style pivot: conversations are tracking industry moves at Gucci and Celine while also noting performance‑chic from Asics and Birkenstock — basically elevated sports and comfort are being pushed as conscious fashion signals this season (x.com). That blend matters because it shows where heritage luxury is meeting functional comfort, which tends to accelerate both resale demand and mainstream streetwear adoption when big names lean into it (x.com).
Fashion has spent years telling shoppers that pain is glamour and sneakers are casual. This season, the pitch is almost the opposite: Gucci is betting on Demna, Celine is reopening under Michael Rider, and brands built on running shoes and cork footbeds are suddenly sitting in the same style conversation. (kering.com) (celine.com) (asics.com) (birkenstock.com) That shift has a name in social chatter: performance-chic. It means clothes and shoes still signal taste, but they also look like they could survive a commute, a long day on foot, or a weekend without a chauffeur. (asics.com) (birkenstock.com) The luxury side of the story starts with pressure. Kering said Gucci’s 2025 revenue fell to €6 billion, down 22% as reported, which is the kind of slump that makes every runway decision feel less like art direction and more like triage. (kering.com) Gucci’s answer was not a quiet caretaker. On March 13, 2025, Kering said Demna would become Gucci’s artistic director starting in early July 2025, bringing in the designer who spent a decade turning Balenciaga’s street-heavy, comfort-coded silhouettes into one of fashion’s loudest visual languages. (kering.com) That matters because Demna’s track record is built on making everyday shapes feel expensive. Oversized hoodies, technical sneakers, roomy tailoring, and deliberately practical outerwear became luxury objects under his watch, which makes Gucci’s move look like a search for relevance through wearability rather than through old-school polish alone. (kering.com) Celine is taking a different road to a nearby destination. Its Spring 2026 collection is the first major runway chapter by Michael Rider, and the brand describes it as a new chapter built around “modern pieces with permanence,” which is fashion language for clothes meant to live beyond one season’s hype cycle. (celine.com 1) (celine.com 2) Rider’s background helps explain why people read that debut as a tone change. Before taking over Celine in 2025, he had worked at Balenciaga, spent a decade as a design director under Phoebe Philo at Celine, and later became creative director at Polo Ralph Lauren, which means he knows both minimalist luxury and American sportswear grammar. (dazeddigital.com) (wmagazine.com) On the non-luxury side, Asics has been training customers to see running technology as style language. Its Sportstyle business keeps feeding fashion with collaborations and retro-performance models, and its own site now frames those drops as a steady release calendar rather than as one-off athlete gear. (asics.com 1) (asics.com 2) The clearest example is Cecilie Bahnsen’s ongoing work with Asics. Asics says the GEL-KAYANO 20 project was the sixth chapter in that partnership and was first shown during Bahnsen’s Autumn Winter 2025 show in Paris, which is a neat summary of the whole moment: a running shoe brand using a runway to sell delicacy, performance, and status in one object. (asics.com) Birkenstock has done something similar from the comfort end of the market. Its 1774 line and collaborations with brands like Filson and Etro take shoes once associated with orthopedic practicality and place them inside luxury retail language, premium materials, and fashion-week timing. (birkenstock.com) (birkenstock.com) (birkenstock.com) The Etro collaboration shows how explicit that strategy has become. Birkenstock says the ETRO x BIRKENSTOCK project was presented during Milan Fashion Week on February 25, 2026, which turns a comfort clog into part of the same seasonal machinery that usually sells tailored coats and evening bags. (birkenstock.com) Once that machinery starts moving, resale usually follows. StockX said in January 2026 that nearly 200 brands set new all-time annual sales records on its marketplace in 2025, and The RealReal continues to package resale as a formal luxury trend report, which tells you secondary demand is no longer a side effect of fashion hype but one of its main scoreboards. (stockx.com) (therealreal.com) That is why “performance-chic” is more than a mood-board phrase. When Gucci reaches for Demna, Celine talks about permanence, Asics keeps landing in Paris fashion conversations, and Birkenstock places comfort shoes in Milan Fashion Week, the industry is not choosing between luxury and practicality anymore; it is trying to sell both at once. (kering.com) (celine.com) (asics.com) (birkenstock.com)
