Is Brazil Paving The Way for Bucking The Luxury Downturn?
Probably like you, Bianca Corona doesn’t shop. Or not old-school shopping, at least.
The 37-year-old fashion buyer-turned-influencer from São Paulo rarely sets foot in the city’s upscale malls — despite her predilection for Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Chloé. More often than not, purchases are delivered directly to her home, preceded by a WhatsApp message from her sales associate informing her that a piece she spotted on social media or during Paris Fashion Week has arrived.
On the rare occasions when Corona does head in-store, it’s primarily to feel fabrics or test a silhouette. For her, physical retail is just one touchpoint within a broader service-led ecosystem where her attention is coveted by the biggest brands at every stage of the journey. “There isn’t a standard shopping experience that I expect,” she says, but “a consistent level of service.”
Corona mirrors a broader cohort of Brazil’s luxury consumers, who have largely withstood the downturn seen in markets such as the US, Europe, and Asia. Top-tier spending has remained comparatively robust despite the global uncertainly of the past 18 months, underpinned by clients whose wealth spans generations, but it has also been enhanced by newer growth engines across agriculture, finance, and energy. To court this growing segment, the luxury market here has evolved around service, trust, and human connection. And while that’s not a story unique to the country, Brazil certainly seems to be riding the wave better than others.
In 2025, Brazil’s luxury market was valued at approximately $9.7bn, according to Fflur Roberts, head of luxury goods at Euromonitor International, driven by strong performance in personal luxury goods, automobiles, and hospitality. This growth was sustained even as Brazil’s GDP fell from 3.4 percent in 2024 to 2.3 percent in 2025, as reported by the IMF. Euromonitor projects that Brazil will outperform the region, with luxury market growth of 8.1 percent to $10.2bn in 2026 and 9.1 percent to $11.5bn in 2027. These rates exceed forecasts for Asia Pacific (4.4 percent), North America (6.3 percent), and Western Europe (7.2 percent).
“The ultra-high-net-worth Brazilian is still very liquid,” says Paula Merlo, head of content at Vogue Brazil. “If they lost money, it wasn’t enough to change their spending habits.” Indeed, Euromonitor estimates that the number of adults in Brazil worth more than $50m will rise by 33 percent to 1,600 by the end of the decade.
Long before ‘experiential luxury’ became a global trend, Brazil’s big spenders were accustomed to special treatment. Historically high import taxes — adding as much as 30 to 50 percent to fashion and luxury, and even more to cars — along with limited product assortment and fewer retail locations, forced brands to make local shopping more attractive. As a result, service, hospitality, and personal relationships became baseline expectations rather than differentiators.
At upscale mall chain Iguatemi, this takes the form of a concierge-led model offering VIP access, personal shopping, and private events, managed by dedicated senior staff who are tasked with looking after the group’s most important clients. CEO Ciro Neto notes that this level of service and familiarity is not available abroad. “In Paris, they wait in queues,” he says.
Iguatemi Brazil ©Tuca Reines
So why travel? At Iguatemi’s flagship locations, international brands — including Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Comme des Garçons, and Loewe — now account for nearly 40 percent of the offering. These personalized experiences at such globally desirable brands are key to driving sales, says Neto.
Over at rival high-end mall Cidade Jardim, the scene is a more overtly lifestyle-driven vision of luxury. Owned by JHSF, a major player in Brazil’s real-estate sector with a wide portfolio of hospitality, residential, and leisure assets, the mall concentrates luxury fashion in a highly curated setting, with dozens of designer stores operated locally for brands such as Brunello Cucinelli, Chloé, Isabel Marant, and Balmain.
And one thing elite shoppers can get in Brazil that they can’t find elsewhere? Flexibility. ‘Parcelamento’ or payment in installments, is a given. “It’s cultural,” says Merlo. “[Even very affluent consumers who] shop both abroad and in Brazil will pay for a bag over six or 12 months.”
As Brazil’s luxury market continues to evolve, with more brands and a more discerning consumer base, status has shifted from purchasing power to participation. Priscila Monteiro, founder of her namesake communications agency and a former Latin America public relations executive at Dior and Louis Vuitton, says that Brazilian consumers have become highly attuned to luxury, driving intense competition among brands to deliver immersive, highly Instagrammable experiences and soirées.
Access has become a form of currency. “Clients want to show they were invited,” she says, “and brands use this to drive sales. If the client doesn’t buy, they’re not eligible for the guest list.”
To reinforce loyalty, operators such as Iguatemi extend the experience beyond the mall. Merlo recounts that select VIPs are flown to Paris for Fashion Week, folding travel into its relationship strategy. “Guests may attend one or two shows,” she says, “but are also granted rare access to exclusive moments such as visits to the Hermès atelier, the Louis Vuitton maison, or invitation-only exhibitions.”
Bottega Veneta, meanwhile, has chosen a quieter, more localized approach to experiencebuilding. The brand has executed what Monteiro describes as a stealthy, sophisticated strategy: “Nothing loud or obvious, but extremely consistent.”
On the occasion of its 10th anniversary in Brazil in 2023, for example, Bottega Veneta staged its cultural exchange series, The Square, at Casa de Vidro, the modernist São Paulo residence designed by Lina Bo Bardi.
Rather than a high-profile commercial venue, the brand chose the architect’s former residence — long a meeting place for São Paulo’s artistic and intellectual circles — transforming a site deeply embedded in the country’s cultural imagination with an immersive program of Brazilian and international artists over 11 days.
Monteiro believes the Italian brand now carries a level of cachet comparable to Hermès. “It’s become a symbol of refined taste, discretion and ‘insider’ luxury, appealing to a more mature, confident consumer who does not need logos to communicate status.”
Alongside this shift, Brazil’s wealthy consumers have shown growing confidence in local brands, reinforced by the international success of labels such as Adriana Degreas, Alexandre Birman, and Farm Rio, to name a few. Their visibility abroad has helped reframe Brazilian fashion as credible, contemporary, and culturally fluent.
Significantly, this rise in Brazil’s luxury class is countrywide. While São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro continue to dominate the country’s economy, much growth has come from the Midwest, with states such as Mato Grosso and Goiás generating new pools of affluent consumers in cities including Goiânia, Cuiabá, and Rondonópolis.
“Many newly wealthy consumers from the Midwest come to São Paulo to buy luxury, driving sales in our malls,” says Neto, adding that high interest rates — currently around 15 percent — also encourage wealthy Brazilians to park capital locally, generating significant returns.
Elsewhere, a recent Bain Brazil study shows that 45 percent of new luxury-car sales now take place outside the Southeast, with strong momentum in the Central-West. Meanwhile, the Northeast accounts for roughly 30 percent of premium healthcare demand, alongside accelerating growth in luxury real estate, particularly second homes along the coast in destinations such as Fortaleza, Natal, and Trancoso.
Carlos Ferreirinha, founder of MCF Consultoria, specializing in luxury management intelligence, says that what distinguishes non-traditional regions from Rio and São Paulo is not geography but “a different moment of cultural maturation.” In these newer wealth centers, luxury is “more pragmatic, intimate and purpose driven,” shaped by entrepreneurship and a focus on longevity, substance, and value over display.
“This shift shows Brazilian luxury is becoming less centralized, less performative, more mature. This isn’t a dilution of luxury, it’s an evolution.”
NAMES TO KNOW
Studio Mellone
Brazilian modernism wasn’t about copying the look of its European counterpart. While it took the modernist belief that form should follow function, it reworked it using local materials like cane, hardwoods, and leather, with consideration for the tropical climate. Studio Mellone follows a similar instinct. Whether informed by founder Andre Mellone’s move from São Paulo to New York at 18 or not, the studio doesn’t perform Brazilianness in predictable fashion. Instead, it brings together the theory and thinking inherited from the Brazilian modernists with influences of Art Deco and Manhattan classicism in its portfolio of private residences, commercial, and retail spaces.
This is reflected less in a signature look than in the way Mellone approaches a room. Compare Thom Browne’s Hong Kong flagship, where polished stone and steel-gray tones are warmed with dark woods and rattan, with Carolina Herrera’s Madison Avenue boutique, with its softpink walls, velvet draping, and references to old Hollywood, or the all-marble and low-lit public spaces at Rockefeller Center. Visually, they have little in common. What unites them is the planning: furniture arranged in smaller, salon-like groupings, and spaces designed to encourage conversation and movement. Ellys Woodhouse
P.Andrade
For those with a desire to look beyond Brazil’s better-known beachwear and resort labels, P.Andrade offers a sharper, more elevated proposition. Founded in 2021 by Pedro Andrade and his wife, Paula Kim, it sits at the intersection of Brazilian culture, industrial design, and contemporary menswear. The brand’s appeal lies in the way it resists the obvious clichés associated with Brazilian culture. Take the spring/summer 2027 collection, Sagrado. After a year researching Brazilian popular rituals, festive traditions, and folkloric figures — from Rio’s Bate-bolas to Papangus, Ursas, and Pai João — the duo translated those references into mask-like headpieces, technical jackets, and relaxed tailoring with sharp infusions of ceremonial color.
“There is this idea that everyone is happy, but for most people life is very hard. The partying comes from that intensity; we call it funny and dangerous. That’s what inspired the collection,” says Andrade. In 2025, P.Andrade became the first Brazilian brand to officially show on the Paris menswear calendar. Andrade’s move into the high end was helped by the reputation he had already built as the founder of Piet, one of Brazil’s most influential streetwear labels. Launched in 2012, Piet helped shape a new Brazilian streetwear language, building a record of collaborations with global names including Nike, Oakley, Levi’s, Asics, Swarovski, Adidas, and Puma. Kim, meanwhile, trained at Central Saint Martins and previously had stints at houses including Dior and Burberry. Graciela Martin
Sauer
The origins of jewelry house Sauer date back to 1941, when French gemologist Jules Roger Sauer established Lapidação Amsterdam in Rio de Janeiro, after fleeing Europe during World War II. Over the following decades, the company grew alongside Brazil’s emerging luxury market and with rising international attention, built a reputation around the nations’s abundance of colored gemstones, eventually opening its first boutique next to the Copacabana Palace in 1956. This geographical connection with Brazil remains integral to Sauer’s identity. Its bold, sculptural designs draw inspiration from the country’s geology, culture, and craftsmanship, often pairing rare gemstones, including emeralds and aquamarines, with materials such as ceramics and wood.
Jules Sauer himself also played a role in securing international recognition for Brazil’s first emerald deposits — making repeated trips to the US to prove that green beryls discovered in Brazil’s Bahia were, in fact, emeralds. The 85-year-old family business, now in its third generation, is led by Gabriel Sauer, Rafael Sauer Eisenberg, and creative director Stephanie Wenk. And while the company has expanded internationally — most recently with the opening of its seventh store, and first outside Brazil, on New York’s Madison Avenue — its identity remains closely tied to the gemstones that helped bring wider attention to Brazil’s mineral wealth. Grace Taylor