The Luxury Brands Koreans Love — 2026 Rankings and the Quiet Shift in Taste

Lines forming outside Seoul’s department store luxury halls before opening time stopped being news years ago. If you had to pick a single number to explain this country’s relationship with luxury, it would be this: Morgan Stanley’s early 2023 report put Korea’s per capita annual luxury spend at $325 — the highest in the world. The same metric: $280 in the U.S., $55 in China.

But what makes 2026 interesting isn’t the ranking itself. It’s what moved inside it.

Why Does Korea Keep Showing Up in the Luxury Conversation?

A country of 50 million people keeps getting name-checked in global luxury earnings calls for one reason. Not because the market is huge — but because it’s the one that keeps growing when everything else is shrinking.

Bain & Company and Altagamma pegged the 2025 global personal luxury market at roughly €358 billion, down 2% from the year prior. Cumulatively steep price hikes finally pushed out entry-level and mid-tier buyers. That same year, the exact opposite happened in Korea.

In its Q1 2026 earnings call, LVMH reported that while Europe and Japan revenue declined, Korea alone grew — and put a photo of Shinsegae’s main branch on the cover of its earnings presentation. For brands, Korea’s value isn’t just the sales volume. It’s a market that moves independently of the economic cycle.

Which Brands Are the Strongest Right Now, in 2026?

Brand rankings shift depending entirely on what you measure. Here, we’re using real transaction data (trading volume, average market price, number of listings) from Feelway, Korea’s largest luxury resale platform. Department store revenue figures aren’t public at the brand level, and surveys measure aspiration — what people say they want. Actual buying and selling leaves a trail, and that trail gets closest to where real taste sits right now.

🏆 Overall Luxury Brand Ranking TOP 10 (Feelway real transaction data, June 2026)

The right-hand column is where the real story lives. Even Hermès and Chanel — #1 and #2 overall — get pushed aside in watches, jewelry, and outerwear. Korean consumers aren’t loyal to brands. They’re loyal to categories, and they pick different winners for each one.

📌 Category Leaders (1st–3rd) — See How the Order Flips

A few things jump out. Thom Browne — barely #10 overall yet a powerhouse in men’s apparel — is not a pattern you see in many countries. The gray cardigan and tricolor stripe detailing have carved out a uniquely deep foothold here. In men’s T-shirts, Korean designer brand Wooyoungmi sits at #4. And hovering near the top of men’s shoes and apparel are logo-free names like Brunello Cucinelli and Loro Piana. The quiet luxury story we’re about to get into is already baked into the rankings — if you know where to look.

Eru-sha: How Much They Sell, and How Much They've Raised Prices

In Korea, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel are bundled into a single portmanteau: Eru-sha (Er from Hermès, Ru from Louis Vuitton, Sha from Chanel). All three Korean subsidiaries posted record results in fiscal 2025, based on audit reports filed with the Financial Supervisory Service in April 2026.

💰 Major Luxury Brands — Korea Subsidiaries, 2025 Results

This was the first time Chanel crossed ₩2 trillion in Korea, and the first time Hermès crossed ₩1 trillion — milestones since each brand entered the market. What’s worth sitting with: these numbers happened while prices kept climbing.

When prices rise and demand rises right along with them, economics textbooks call it the Veblen effect. Korea had a word for it before the textbooks did: Cha-tech — a portmanteau of Chanel and investment (jaetech, 재테크). When popular models routinely resell above retail, the line “luxury is cheapest today” stops being a joke and starts functioning as a purchase rationale. In the TrendMonitor survey, 69.5% of respondents agreed that “limited-edition luxury goods will likely appreciate over time.”

Where Did the Growth Go, Now That It's Left Handbags Behind?

The sharpest shift in Korea’s 2026 luxury market sits just outside the rankings table. The growth axis has tilted from bags and apparel toward jewelry and watches.

📈 Department Store Luxury Category Sales Growth (Q1 2026, YoY)

In a year where bags still grew nearly 30%, jewelry and watches grew at nearly double that pace. Brand-level results point the same way: Bulgari Korea posted a record year with revenue up 36.9%, Rolex Korea grew 24.6%, and Tiffany Korea rose 19.2%. Richemont Korea — home to Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Piaget — saw revenue climb 19.6% in fiscal 2024/25.

Three reasons explain it. Value retention — in a rising gold market, jewelry depreciates less. Low trend sensitivity — bags and clothes are seasonal; a ring or a watch gets worn for a decade. Assetization — more people are mentally logging these purchases as holdings, not consumption. Layer on top of this a recent rebound in the number of marriages, which brought engagement-jewelry demand with it.

But Koreans Say They Don't Like Logos

This is where the story doubles back on itself. Revenue is hitting all-time highs. Ask consumers what they actually think, and the answers land in the opposite direction.

These numbers come from Embrain TrendMonitor, which surveyed 1,000 Korean men and women aged 19–69 in February 2026.

When asked what matters most when choosing a luxury item, the top answer was “products whose brand value doesn’t change over time” (62.1%, multiple responses). That was followed by “global recognition” (46.8%) and “artisan-made products” (44.8%). Logo size sat near the bottom of the list. This sensibility has a name: quiet luxury. Seoul’s retailers have already rearranged their floors to match. Hyundai Department Store expanded its lineup of logo-free brands like Brunello Cucinelli and Herno and reported that this brand group’s sales grew 32.8% year-on-year from September to November 2025.

Another thread in the same survey: the generation gap. Overall, 56.0% of respondents had purchased luxury goods — a majority. But compare 2022 to 2026: among people in their 20s, the purchase rate fell from 46.8% to 41.0%. Among 30-somethings, it dropped from 67.6% to 57.5%. Yet in those same age groups, the share who agreed that “luxury is extravagant” rose — for 30-somethings, from 38.4% to 53.0%. The generation that was buying most actively is the first to put some distance between itself and luxury.

Instead, this generation changed how they buy. Some 61.5% of respondents said “buying and selling pre-owned luxury is now a perfectly normal way to consume,” and among people in their 20s, intent to buy secondhand in the future rose from 34.4% in 2022 to 44.0%. This is why platforms like Feelway — whose transaction data we used for the rankings above — have become the most honest window into Korean taste right now.

Where Koreans Buy — and What About Travelers?

Ask where people shop, and department store luxury halls (57.4%) and duty-free shops (47.7%) still lead — multiple responses allowed. The geography of those department stores is extremely lopsided.

🏬 Top 5 Department Stores by Revenue, 2025

In a year when 37 of the country’s 65 department store locations posted negative growth, the top-tier stores only got bigger. Luxury brands choose where to place their counters, and that map mirrors this ranking exactly.

📍 Open in Naver Map

📍 Open in Naver Map

For travelers, the peculiar thing about Korea right now is that the center of gravity for foreign shopping has shifted from duty-free to department stores. A weak won plus the ability to claim post-purchase tax refunds (VAT) at department stores means that even paying full list price, the effective cost has dropped. From January to May 2026, 8.72 million foreign visitors arrived in Korea — up 21% — but foreign card spending during the same period hit ₩7.778 trillion (~$5.98 billion), up 48.9%. Spending is growing more than twice as fast as headcount. Over the same stretch, Shinsegae’s imported luxury brand revenue rose 34.8%; Hyundai Department Store’s rose 32.4%.

Korea's luxury rankings won't change dramatically anytime soon. Eru-sha will stay on top. Moncler will rise every winter. But watch what's growing underneath, and you'll see the direction this country's consumption is heading. What's growing now isn't logos. It's things you can hold onto for a long time.