CaratBain puts jewellery on top of a flat luxury market
The Bain and Altagamma spring study has personal luxury goods growing 2% to 4% in 2026, reaching €365 to €373 billion after falling to €358 billion last year. Jewellery is named the strongest category.
§1Best in a market barely moving.
Jewellery has finished 2026's first half as the best-performing category in a luxury market that is barely moving. The spring edition of the Bain and Altagamma Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study puts personal luxury goods, which covers jewellery, watches, fashion and accessories, at €358 billion in 2025, down from €364 billion the year before, and forecasts €365 billion to €373 billion in 2026, a return to growth of 2% to 4%. Total global luxury spending is put at €1.44 trillion to €1.47 trillion, growing between nothing and 2% at constant exchange rates.
The category evidence is in the reported quarters rather than in the forecast. Richemont's jewellery houses grew for a seventh consecutive quarter in the first period of its year, and Kering's jewellery brands posted double-digit growth over the same window, with Boucheron reaching a record. This desk has filed both, along with Tiffany and Bulgari carrying an LVMH group that fell 3% overall. Four separate groups have now reported the same shape: jewellery up, the rest of the portfolio flat or down, in a market where the aggregate is close to zero.
§2Four groups, one shape.
The regional split explains where that growth is being found. Bain has American luxury brands up 10% to 15% year on year in the first quarter and United States spending rising, while Europe is described as the weak link on faltering international tourism. China is recovering slowly. Japan is slowing as Chinese tourist traffic falls away from the exchange-rate boom that drove it. A category leading a flat market on American demand is a category with a concentrated dependency, and the tariff schedule that took effect on July 24 sits directly on top of that dependency.
Four separate groups have now reported the same shape: jewellery up, the rest of the portfolio flat or down
§3Where the growth is found.
Watches are given a separate diagnosis and it is a structural one. Bain describes collectors valuing connoisseurship over hype, with the momentum moving to the resale market. That is consistent with what the secondary indices have shown all year, and with Swiss export figures that recovered 11.2% in June while the first half stayed 0.7% below last year. It is not a description of a weak category. It is a description of a category whose demand has moved to a channel the brands do not own.
Being the strongest category in a market growing between zero and 2% is a smaller distinction than the press release implies, and it should be read as evidence of where luxury spending retreats to rather than of jewellery's momentum. When discretionary budgets tighten, buyers move toward objects with a metal value and a resale market and away from goods that depreciate on the walk home. Gold above $4,000 an ounce has made that logic explicit rather than instinctive. The risk in the trade's current good run is mistaking a defensive rotation for a structural preference, because rotations reverse when confidence returns.
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Subscribe free →Tiffany and Bulgari carry LVMH as the group slips 3%
Tiffany and Bulgari carry a group that slipped 3%.