Following a multiyear boom, iconic luxury brand Chanel’s growth in the US has slowed over the last six months, indicating a deceleration in the luxury industry’s largest market.

The privately held, second-largest luxury brand in the world by revenues is expanding “in the single digits” in the US, according to chief financial officer Philippe Blondiaux, after expanding by almost 10 per cent in the Americas, where the US accounts for the majority of sales, last year.

“We had a softening in the US, so no different from some of our competitors, from November of 2022, and that’s continued over the first few months of 2023,” Blondiaux said.

In 2022, Chanel reported record sales of US $ 17.2 billion, an increase of 17 per cent from the previous year.

The Wertheimer family owns the 113-year-old Parisian business started by designer Coco Chanel, and chief executive Leena Nair has rejected an IPO, stressing the business would remain privately owned.

Following several years of unheard-of expansion, fears over the prospects for the luxury industry rocked listed companies this week, wiping down more than US $ 60 billion in value in the space of two days due to profit-taking and worries about the outlook for the US.

The stock of the world leader LVMH is down 6.8 per cent this week, as is the stock of Kering, the owner of Gucci by 6.8 per cent, while Hermès is down 4.3 per cent.

“We maintain a really strong outlook for 2023, maybe a more positive outlook than what’s been reflected over the past few days [during the sell-off]”, said Blondiaux.

In 2024 and 2025, he continued, he did not anticipate a shift in the luxury industry’s growth trends.

Chanel claimed it is recovering with double-digit growth in the mainland following zero-percent growth in China, the luxury industry’s largest growing area. Covid lockdowns at the close of the previous year nearly brought the entire business to a halt nationwide.

According to Chanel, Chinese tourism, a significant factor in the growth of the luxury market, is also resurgent. Sales to Chinese consumers in France were down 90 per cent in 2018 compared to 2019, but by April they had recovered and were just 14 per cent below pre-pandemic levels in value terms, despite the fact that traffic was still down by over 50 per cent.