It's luxury's year as new Best Global Brands list shows power of key labels

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Oct 20, 2021

Luxury is continuing its recovery from the pandemic and a new brand ranking released on Wednesday showed that luxury labels are among the world’s top performers.

Interbrand’s 2021 Best Global Brands list may have shown Tesla as the fastest growing brand of 2021 overall, with an unprecedented 184% increase in brand value. But luxury — and especially fashion — was the best-performing sector this time. And Interbrand said that LVMH scored particularly well.

Its Sephora brand (at number #100) was actually the only new entry to the ranking this year, but its addition makes LVMH the biggest group entity in the table. And it’s the first to have five brands in the Best Global Brands table – with Sephora forming a quintet alongside the much-higher-placed Louis Vuitton (#13), Dior (#77), Tiffany & Co (#92) and Hennessy (#95). 

Vuitton is actually one of only two luxury brands present in the list since the beginning of the study over two decades ago and as well as having been the only luxury brand to break through to the top 20, it’s now also entered the top 15. That also makes it the most valuable luxury brand in the study. 

With Dior and Tiffany both rising and even two brands not owned by LVMH — Hermès and Prada — increasing as much as 20% in brand value, this is clearly luxury’s year.

That can also be seen when looking at country-specific results. For instance, the top two brands in the UK are HSBC and Land Rover, but behind them in third place is Burberry. Meanwhile in France, the leaders are Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Hermès, with L’Oréal fourth then Cartier, Dior and Sephora in seventh to 10th spots. In Italy, the top three are Gucci, Ferrari and Prada.

Despite that, tech dominates the overall global top 10, with no changes to the top three of Apple (#1), Amazon (#2) and Microsoft (#3). The top three brands accounted for a third (33%) of the total table value this year.

And the top 100 brands as a whole are now valued at $2.67 billion — up 15% from 2020 – the highest ever growth rate in the 22-year history of Interbrand’s Best Global Brands list.

Also figuring prominently in the ranking are two media brands that are hugely important to the fashion, beauty and luxury segments — Facebook and Instagram (which is also Facebook-owned). They’re at number 15 and 19, respectively, with rises this time of 3% and 23%.

The results of the report are reached using three key pieces of analysis, including the financial performance of the branded products or services; the role the brand plays in purchase decisions; plus the brand’s competitive strength and its ability to create loyalty and, therefore, sustainable demand and profit into the future.