What happened to luxury ecommerce, and what is still safe to order

A year ago this week, over three days from August 27, 2025, five banks applied to force SSENSE into creditor protection and a quick sale, and SSENSE filed a competing application to stop them. Two days into that fight the United States ended the eight hundred dollar de minimis exemption that let small parcels cross its border without duty. Fifty nine percent of SSENSE's customers live there. The filings put the debt at about 371 million Canadian dollars, liabilities of 517 million against 420 million of assets, and sales down more than twenty percent.

That was not one company having a bad quarter. Between December 2023 and June 2026 every large independent site that sold other people's luxury clothing was wound up, rescued for scrap, given away with cash attached, or bought back by its founders for a fraction of its old price. Here is the ledger.

Fifty two million pounds, then administration

Frasers Group bought MatchesFashion in mid December 2023 for 52 million pounds, a business reported at close to a billion US dollars in its 2017 sale. On March 7, 2024, less than three months later, Frasers put Matches into administration citing continued material losses, cut 273 jobs, and let the site wind down. It kept the brand name (the cheapest thing in a fashion business to hold, and the only part with no losses attached).

The rescue that wiped everyone out

On August 24, 2022, Richemont announced it was selling 47.5 percent of the group that owns Net-a-Porter to Farfetch, the deal meant to put luxury ecommerce on one platform. It never closed. On December 18, 2023 Farfetch announced its own rescue instead: 500 million dollars of bridge financing from Coupang in South Korea, through a British administration agreed in advance that wiped out the shareholders and about a billion dollars of convertible noteholders. Coupang completed the purchase on January 31, 2024 over bondholder objections. The New York listing ended with the shares deemed worthless, founder José Neves stepped down, and the Richemont deal died with it. The site still takes orders.

Richemont paid a buyer to take Net-a-Porter

In October 2024 Richemont agreed to hand the same group to Mytheresa, delivered debt free with 555 million euros of net cash attached, in exchange for a 33 percent stake.

The seller paid the buyer to take it.

The deal completed in April 2025 and the combined parent has traded in New York as LUXE since May 1, 2025. What sat inside that dowry surfaced in September 2025, when the group's Italian operation put 211 of its 1,091 staff there at risk in Bologna and Milan, citing revenue down 191 million euros in a year and more than two billion euros of losses over two. A union agreement in December brought the number to 145. Mytheresa, the operator that stayed disciplined, finished as the consolidator rather than the casualty.

What the court file said about SSENSE

SSENSE won a stay on September 9, 2025, took about forty million dollars of interim financing the following week, and went into a court supervised sale process with a bid deadline of October 6. Roughly a third of the staff went. On December 8 the Atallah brothers, Rami, Bassel and Firas, bid twenty million dollars in cash for their own company, and on December 23 raised it to 58.5 million plus 18.2 million of assumed liabilities, about 78 million. In January 2026 the court took that bid over lenders pushing for liquidation, and it closed on February 13, 2026. A minority investment in June 2021 had valued the same company at more than four billion US dollars.

Customers had the model worked out before the banks did. In a small January 2022 forum thread, shoppers passed on the method: wait for the scheduled sales, where discounts start at forty percent and reach around eighty for invited members, and a private sale is only early access to a public one. Buying wholesale and liquidating at eighty percent off has an ending built into it. The only open question was the date.

The department stores ran the same experiment

Saks Global was assembled in the opposite direction, out of buildings. Hudson's Bay agreed to buy Neiman Marcus Group for about 2.7 billion dollars in July 2024 and began operating as Saks Global that November 15, putting Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman under one debt loaded roof. Then the invoices went unpaid and the brands stopped shipping. It skipped a hundred million dollar debt payment on December 31, 2025, and filed Chapter 11 on January 13, 2026 with about 2.65 billion dollars of funded debt. Chanel was owed roughly 136 million, Kering 60 million, LVMH 26 million.

It emerged on June 26, 2026 as Exemplar Luxury Group, debt cut about seventy five percent to under a billion, the portfolio down to 25 Saks, 35 Neiman Marcus and two Bergdorf Goodman stores. The Dallas Neiman Marcus flagship closes on September 30, 2026. The strategy it came out with is stores and service. Toronto ran the fastest version of it, down to a single luxury department store inside twenty four months, counted door by door.

Nobody stopped buying clothes; the business of shipping them everywhere stopped paying.

What is still open

LuisaViaRoma has traded out of Florence through all of it, on its own site, and was running an extra twenty percent off sale stock the week this was written. Even the survivors discount.

Boutiques with their own transactional sites kept trading in Milan, Tokyo and Los Angeles, city by city, while brands pushed sales back into their own stores. What survived was small, close to full price, or standing on a street where somebody could walk in.

Before you press buy

Check who owns a site before you check its price. Net-a-Porter has been a Mytheresa company since April 2025, and its own footer now sends the investor relations link to LuxExperience; Farfetch has been Coupang's since January 31, 2024; SSENSE has been founder owned again since February 13, 2026, and is shipping.

If the parcel is crossing into the United States, price the duty in: the de minimis exemption ended on August 29, 2025 and nothing replaced it, so the discount that was the reason to order from abroad now arrives with a bill behind it. Deep discount tends to mean final sale, so get the return window in writing before you pay. When the thing is already in a shop in your city, that is the shorter route: someone can hold it, and there is no border. The Toronto ones are listed by street.

Common questions

Is SSENSE going out of business?

No, SSENSE is trading, and has been owned by its founders again since February 13, 2026, when their roughly 78 million dollar buyback closed. It spent from August 2025 in Canadian creditor protection, and in January 2026 a court chose the founders' bid over lenders who wanted it liquidated.

What happened to MatchesFashion?

MatchesFashion is closed. Frasers Group bought it in mid December 2023 for 52 million pounds, put it into administration on March 7, 2024 citing continued material losses, and let the site wind down. The address now carries a relaunch notice and sells nothing.

Is Farfetch still safe to order from?

Farfetch still operates and takes orders, and has been owned by Coupang since the acquisition completed on January 31, 2024. The rescue wiped out the shareholders and about a billion dollars of convertible noteholders, the New York listing ended with the shares deemed worthless, and founder José Neves stepped down. What changed hands was the balance sheet, not the shopfront.

within opens October 1, Toronto first, with the cities in this journal to follow. The waiting list is open in every one of them. Until then, What's your luxury language? reads your taste in two minutes.