Key takeaways
- The 2026 RLC Fashion Summit, on June 4 at the Four Seasons Hotel Milano, brings together the industry leaders shaping the next phase of global fashion and luxury.
- The program tackles the questions the industry is currently navigating: the correction in luxury, the new geography of demand, the future of physical retail, and what genuine brand desirability requires in a saturated market.
- In the room: fashion and luxury CEOs and senior leaders from organizations and brands including Brunello Cucinelli, Saks Global, Prada Group, Selfridges Group, Golden Goose, Kiton, Canali, Armani Group, LuxExperience, and END. Clothing, among others.
Over the past several months, I’ve had a series of conversations with CEOs and senior leaders across fashion and luxury in New York, Milan, London, Paris, Dubai, Seoul, and over calls that ran well past the scheduled time. Real conversations about where things actually stand.
Again and again, the discussions returned to the same tension: luxury has mastered scale, visibility, and price elevation, but many executives are now questioning whether the industry has stretched pricing, distribution, and exposure faster than it has strengthened desirability itself.
Milan in early June is a rare moment of clarity in the fashion calendar. The season’s collections are done, the buzz has settled, the people who run this industry have a moment to breathe and think. And the most senior fashion leaders come together on June 4 for the 2026 RLC Fashion Summit. Not simply because the speaker lineup is exceptional, although it is, but because the market itself has forced a level of strategic clarity and alignment that was optional two years ago. The correction in luxury is real. The geographic shift in demand is real. The businesses that were built for conditions that no longer hold are becoming visible. And the question of which brands possess genuine compounding desirability is one the industry is only beginning to ask out loud.
An intimate environment for high-level exchange
The 2026 Summit is built around a simple belief: the fashion industry needs stronger alignment between the people actually driving policymaking, capital allocation, brand direction, retail transformation, consumer influence, and long-term industry development. Here is a look at the sessions and the voices that will shape our dialogue in Milan:
– Luca Lisandroni (Co-CEO, Brunello Cucinelli) and Lana Todorovich (Chief Global Brands Officer, Saks Global) on rethinking the brand-retail partnership for a new era.
– Carlo Capasa (President, Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana) and Pascal Morand (Executive President, Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode) as they map the “New Fashion Order” through the lens of geopolitics and regulation.
– André Maeder (CEO, Selfridges Group) and Jean-Marie Tritant (Global CEO, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield) on how physical retail is being reconceived as an environment that earns the journey.
– Serge Brunschwig (Industry Advisor) and Caterina Sanson (Partner, OC&C) on what it takes to stay relevant in a world where everything is visible and copied.
– Silvio Campara (CEO, Golden Goose) and Emanuela Prandelli (LVMH Professor of Fashion and Luxury Management, Bocconi University) on why aspiration has become one of the defining business battlegrounds of modern consumer culture.
– Burak Çakmak (CEO, Saudi Fashion Commission) and Alison Rehill-Reguven (CEO, Cenomi centers) to discuss the fast-evolving retail landscape and rules of engagement in the Gulf.
– Michael Kliger (CEO, Mytheresa) and Sebastian Suhl (CEO, END. Clothing) on the changing role of multi-brand retail curation.
– Andrea Bonini (CFO & Executive Director, Prada Group) and Francesco Pascalizi (Partner, Co-Head of Consumer, Permira) on where smart capital is moving inside luxury right now.
– Antonio De Matteis (CEO, Kiton), Stefano Canali (CEO, Canali Group) and Stefania Lazzaroni (CEO, Altagamma), on which businesses were built for a world that no longer exists and which ones are prepared for what comes next.
– John Hooks (Advisor & Board Member, Armani Group), Rahul Prasad (Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Middle East & India, Pike Preston Partners) and Simon Collins (Founder, House of Collins Shanghai), on how to read, enter, and build relevance in the markets where the next wave of luxury growth is coming from.
A different kind of industry conversation
One of the challenges facing the industry today is that too many important conversations still happen in isolation; brands speaking to brands, investors to investors, policymakers to policymakers, technology firms to technologists. Real progress rarely emerges that way.
The RLC Fashion Summit was designed as a convergence point between industries, regions, and perspectives whose futures are becoming more intertwined. Fashion and luxury CEOs from heritage houses, luxury retailers, shopping destinations, investment firms, institutional bodies, and emerging growth markets will take part in conversations that urgently need to happen together. The future of luxury retail depends on exactly this kind of exchange.
And there is something uniquely important about doing this in Milan.
