Luxury fashion houses are pivoting to food — is it just a reminder of how status still shapes society?
Fluffy pastries, extravagant coffees, costly cocktails — are they somehow more worth it if they’ve got a designer logo? Alex O’Neill unpicks the knock-on effect of the new wave of eateries owned by luxury fashion brands on the wealth gap.
Fashion is no longer just referencing food in campaigns: it’s plating it. Labels like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Dior are opening cafés and fine dining restaurants as full-blown extensions of their brand identities. Shoppers now get to literally consume the brand, and the algorithm is eating it up.
Food has always been tied to class and identity. What, where and how we eat has long signified our place in society. Today, as wealth becomes increasingly concentrated at the top, food is emerging as the next frontier of luxury, led by some of the biggest fashion houses in the world.
On a recent trip to Sicily, I stayed in Taormina. I didn’t realise when booking that it was where The White Lotus season two was filmed, but it all made sense quickly: €50-a-day parking, €28 Aperol Spritzes, and very rich Americans occupying all the best seats in the local trattorias. Despite all of this, we spent a stunning week there, surrounded by people far above my tax bracket.
Underneath the shiny surfaces of these logo-drenched cafés lies a reminder that aspiration, class and status still shape society.
We cooked in, on our terracotta balcony BBQ, with finds from the local shops and incredible Sicilian delis off the main streets. The place was dripping in luxury, designer stores everywhere, €400 table minimums, velvet ropes outside restaurants that didn’t even appear on Google Maps. And the pièce de résistance? A Louis Vuitton rooftop cocktail bar, overlooking the Mediterranean and Mount Etna. In my naivety, I thought it was just some over-the-top one-off, but it turns out luxury fashion houses opening cafés, bars, and restaurants is very much a thing.
From limited takeovers to permanent dining ventures, brands have clearly clocked that the way to a consumer’s heart—and wallet—is through their stomach. As someone who runs a food business, I find it more than a little perplexing. It’s no secret how difficult the industry is right now, not just at home, but across Europe and beyond. Restaurants are sitting empty, chefs are burning out, and beloved institutions are shutting their doors for good almost weekly.
And yet, every time I open the feed I use to escape the existential dread of trying to survive in this business, I’m greeted by yet another fashion brand launching a pop-up, restaurant or café concept. It feels a bit surreal. Is it a marketing stunt? A viral cash grab? Or is something deeper happening here? I’m leaning towards the latter.
Fashion’s relationship with food is nothing new, designers have been drawing on it for decades, from Schiaparelli’s iconic lobster dress in 1937 to Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel Supermarket in 2014. Fast food, fruit, pastries, even fish and pasta have all made their way onto runways, into campaigns, and on accessories, with names like Jeremy Scott (Moschino), Jacquemus, Loewe, Anya Hindmarch, and Nik Bentel turning groceries into couture. Food-inspired collections were often playful one-off, cheeky takes on the everyday. But now, it’s gone beyond visual gags or pasta-shaped bags. Luxury brands are building full-blown lifestyle spaces where sipping a latte or €30 cocktail becomes part of the brand experience.
Hospitality isn’t entirely new for fashion either. Prada, Armani, and Ralph Lauren opened restaurants in the late ’90s, with Chanel and Gucci following through collaborations with huge name chefs Alain Ducasse and Massimo Bottura.
These branded cafés and restaurants aren’t just pretty add-ons; they’re curated environments that extend a label’s aesthetic and offer aspirational experiences beyond the clothes. Louis Vuitton, where I first clocked this, has gone all in, with luxury cafés in places like Sicily, Osaka, Saint Tropez, and Heathrow Airport of all places. The brand is food-obsessed lately. Creative Director Pharrell’s recent collection included gyoza-shaped clutches and lobster bags with claws, and just last month, they dropped monogrammed chocolate Easter eggs, courtesy of pastry chef Maxime Frédéric.
Food itself has never had such a moment in fashion. There’s Moschino’s Milano biscuit bag, Desigual’s ravioli dress, STAUD’s sardine clutch, and Bella Hadid for Miss Sixty in a Y2K-themed psychedelic grocery store. Lancôme has opened coffee pop-ups, Dior is serving logo-laden pastries in cafés across Miami, Seoul and Dubai, and Alaïa now offers stainless-steel minimalism with your macchiato in their Bond Street flagship. Some have taken it a step even further; Gucci’s Osteria has multiple Michelin stars, you can literally have breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Prada has acquired iconic Milanese patisserie Marchesi 1824, with locations in Milan and London.
These openings haven’t gone unnoticed, with at least a dozen articles written about the openings in the first half of the year alone… a little irritating considering I started this article in October — helpful for research but that’s ADHD for you! This recent Bain & Company report showed luxury hospitality ventures up 20 per cent, and a study by The NPD Group found that one in four shoppers are more likely to return to stores with sit-down food offerings.
These expansions are here to stay, and although they might just seem like gimmicks, I think they signal a deeper shift in how we consume and where the market and culture is heading. And I don’t think it’s as sweet as a sugar-dusted designer doughnut, let me tell you.
I believe these forays into hospitality by the world’s biggest brands, and some of the sharpest marketing minds, are a calculated response to a rapidly shifting economic landscape. We’re living through widening wealth gaps and are part of a generation who are the first in modern history to be worse off than the one before. Underneath the shiny surfaces of these logo-drenched cafés and restaurants lies something deeper, to me a reminder that aspiration, class and status still shape society.
Luxury brands have always been symbols of status, an intentional public display of wealth, perceived taste and achievement. With social media, this has only grown with the enormity of the audience: it’s no longer just your friends, family and neighbours who can see your purchases, but also the entire internet. People are surrounded by displays of wealth, making it seem like everybody has something that in reality, only few can justify but our feeds are dominated by those who can, or at least influencers who get it for free.
Before the last crash, if you worked hard to get a degree, you’d land a decent job with a salary to match. Back then, you could probably save up and buy yourself a designer piece: a bag, a pair of heels. These items, once aspirational in a way that felt just within reach, are now completely out of the question for most.
These spaces turn food and drink into entry-level luxury, offering a curated glimpse into a world you can’t fully access but can temporarily taste, and most importantly, post about.
Growing up, shows and films made it seem like those purchases marked life milestones: the big birthday, the promotion, the heartbreak glow-up. When I was 16, I promised myself I’d save up for a Chanel calfskin flap. It was around €2,700 back then. The last time I checked, it was €6,700. I just checked again… It’s now €10,800 and I am going to be sick.
I genuinely thought that by 30, I’d be able to buy myself a Chanel bag without wiping out my savings or tanking any hope of a mortgage. But if I walked in the door now and said “honey, I bought an eleven-grand handbag,” I’d be (rightly) flagged for a psychological assessment, instead of applauded for achieving a milestone taken straight from the Carrie Bradshaw School of Financial Thought. Sigh…
This Chanel bag, always expensive, now costs more than an entire year’s rent, it’s grotesque, and intentional. The prices for luxury goods have soared far above inflation over the past decade as part of a deliberate strategy to preserve exclusivity.
Meanwhile, the cost of living keeps rising, and what was once a stable middle class has been replaced by a generation of highly educated, culturally affluent people who earn decent money but can’t build wealth; priced out not only of handbags, but housing, higher education, and even parenting. The brands know this has wiped out a whole section of potential customers, so they’ve pivoted.
This is where the cafés, cocktail bars, and pastry counters enter the equation. These spaces turn food and drink into entry-level luxury, offering a curated glimpse into a world you can’t fully access but can temporarily taste, and most importantly, post about. Deloitte found that people are almost three times more likely to treat themselves to food or drink than to personal care, reporting: “When economic times are tough, people tend to choose affordable luxuries—like cosmetics—to treat themselves… These purchases are driven by their relative affordability and the consumer’s desire for escapism.”
You may not be able to afford an 11 grand handbag, but you could maybe try the €9 Dior coffee, a €15 pastry at Prada Café or a €25 cocktail at Gucci Osteria, and for a moment, feel like you’re part of it. The experience is accessible enough to attract a broader audience, yet exclusive enough to maintain the brand’s elite status, allowing those who are guests in the space to feel superior to those who aren’t, in the same way the luxury brands’ insane prices do, just a step above.
These locations offer the illusion of access, where you’re welcomed into the world, but only just. They monetise aspiration and emotional vulnerability, not just with €25 cocktails, but through the quiet suggestion that you’re lucky to be there at all.
Fashion’s move into cafés and restaurants isn’t just about “experience.” It signals something deeper. When major luxuries are out of reach, we find other ways to feel included, even if just for a moment. By pivoting to food and drink, luxury brands tap into the same aspirational psychology. They provide a way for consumers to literally taste the lifestyle, without fully crossing the financial threshold required for traditional luxury items. For those locked out of traditional luxury, this creates a kind of psychological tension, one I feel myself, not just for the bag I’ll never own, but for what it all stands for.
This aligns with Freud’s concept of sublimation, where unattainable desires are redirected toward more accessible outlets. Where once the sublimation might’ve taken the form of a lipstick, today it’s a matcha latte served in a Dior-embossed cup, shot under the perfect light and shared straight to the ‘gram.
Brands and tastemakers market these ventures as democratising luxury, by offering a “slice” of the action, consumers get a taste of the lifestyle at a fraction of the cost, which satisfies the aspirational hunger ingrained into us by media our whole lives. However, what they actually offer are illusions of access, where you’re welcomed into the world, but only just. They monetise aspiration and emotional vulnerability, not just with €25 cocktails, but through the quiet suggestion that you’re lucky to be there at all.
Last week, after wandering around a few art galleries in central London, I stopped into the Alaïa flagship and climbed the spiral staircase to their sleek new café. I ordered an iced black coffee and a miso caramel cookie square, and for a moment, I was an Alaïa customer. I’ve followed their collections for years, never owned a piece, but here I was, finally participating. That feeling evaporated as soon as I was told I couldn’t carry the drink while browsing, and the friendly sales associate quickly pivoted her attention to someone who, from what I could tell, worked in fashion. I left without finishing my salty cookie.
Rather than closing the gap, they highlight it, offering a fleeting sense of belonging that disappears the moment you step outside. Darker again, they also monetise one of our most basic human needs, food. As food prices continue to soar globally, we are stepping into a reality that many from the poorer south already have to deal with, that food itself is a luxury not all have easy or sufficient access to.
These shifts in luxury branding align with broader societal trends like the decline of ownership and the rise of the rental economy. Owning a home, car and luxury goods is increasingly reserved for the wealthy. For everyone else, consumption leans toward subscriptions, rentals, and if you’re lucky, experiences. Luxury cafés fit neatly into this model, offering a taste of a lifestyle without the permanence of owning it. For brands, it’s a win-win. They broaden their audience and revenue while keeping the aspirational glow of their core products intact.
In the same way, when tomatoes, tinned fish, or baguettes appear as luxury accessories or candles, I find it hard to accept them just as playful, quirky designs. These are once-affordable staples being selectively rebranded into objects of inaccessibility, in the same way ripped clothes, dirt-stained designer trainers and giant IKEA X Balenciaga bags came before.
Capitalism depends on this dismissal and extraction of labour, land, and life from some to elevate others. What we’re seeing now is that made literal, in handbags and restaurants where food exists to be displayed and photographed, not eaten. The ultimate display of wealth.
Now, before I lose the run of myself, I am not trying to say this is a big conspiracy to consciously sublimate an entire generation. I can, of course, understand that many of these venues are genuine marketing expenses by brands that have huge resources, and are keen to find meaningful ways to create organic online content in the age of social media. I do think brands can do this well, in ways that feel thoughtful and genuinely aligned with their values.
Take Stella McCartney, who launched the brand’s first experiential space, STELLA’S WORLD, in Osaka, an all-vegan café. This seems like a natural extension of McCartney’s lifelong commitment to animal rights, where vegan drinks and treats like the ‘STELLATTE’ and Falabella Ice-Cream Cake are served, named after the brand’s core collection. On the other end of the spectrum, Gucci’s Osteria da Massimo Bottura, a collaboration with Chef Bottura, one of the world’s best chefs, which resulted in a string of Michelin-starred restaurants that fuse great Italian food with high fashion design, both key elements of Italy’s cultural identity.
Social media has changed the hospitality and food industry fundamentally. Meals are styled, photographed, and consumed digitally before they’re eaten in real life, many dishes and drinks are designed specifically to be shared, the phrase “phones eat first” echoing across restaurants. A strong social media presence can make or break a business. Entire micro-industries of food bloggers, reviewers and creators have emerged. A viral moment will literally put a restaurant, pizza spot or café on the map, which feeds into endless attention from those wanting to see what the fuss is all about.
Finally, it would feel remiss not to mention the very real discomfort in how an industry that still glorifies thinness puts food on a pedestal like this. Fashion has long idolised bodies that appear untouched by appetite, all while using food as a prop, a motif, or now, an entire marketing strategy. These same brands now appear on the very algorithms that feed us a surreal loop.
Owning a home, car, and luxury goods is increasingly reserved for the wealthy. For everyone else, consumption leans toward subscriptions, rentals, and if you're lucky, experiences.
One minute it’s triple-stacked pancakes and molten cheese pulls, the next it’s hyper-edited images of flawless, toned bodies. We’re shown models laughing over doughnuts, influencers posing with untouched macarons, and “what I eat in a day” videos where adults proudly restrict themselves to less than a child’s lunchbox. All quietly sponsored by the same brands inviting you to spend your money in their indulgent cafés and restaurants.
Fashion uses food to sell the fantasy, but never the reality, especially not where all are welcome. How can an industry built on control, deprivation, and image also be the one dishing out whipped cream and sugared pastries? That contradiction is baked into every curated menu, every gleaming café interior, every image of a perfectly placed cherry on a perfectly plated dessert.
Are we witnessing the beginnings of food as a new status symbol? Could dining itself become another area where exclusivity thrives and divides? Or maybe I’m overthinking it, and fashion’s just decided to try its hand at hospitality, one of the most gruelling, low-margin, environmentally fragile industries out there. Either way, it feels like yet another example of how life feels like an endless episode of Black Mirror.
Whatever happens, I think it’s safe to say that luxury is no longer just something you wear, it’s something you sip, taste, and post on Instagram.
For those priced out of traditional luxury, these spaces may offer comfort, even joy, or a fleeting sense of belonging in a world that often feels out of reach, but they also reinforce the growing divide between the ultra-wealthy and the rest, suggesting that even a cup of coffee can become a marker of class. In a world tilting back toward French Revolution levels of inequality, serving cake to the masses might feel clever until you remember where you heard that before…
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