France Riots Expose the Rage Aimed at Dior, Hermès and Other Luxury Brands

Amid all of the images and videos that emerged of the riots that took place in France over the weekend, the most shocking are those of the clock tower collapsing in Limoges after its 19th-century town hall was set alight.

Close behind, however, are the shots of looters storming the gates of luxury brands like Celine, Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent, breaking through the plate-glass windows that act as a scrim between the outside world and the hushed interiors that cater to the ultrarich, smashing their sparkling vitrines and looting their goods.

Of the estimated more than 3,000 shops that have been affected by the spiraling protests, including grocery stores, pharmacies and family-run operations, it is the luxury destruction that has caught much of the attention, and the imagination, of the watching world.

Whenever demonstrations are coupled with looting, they set off a conversation about wider, often inchoate, expressions of anger over inequality, not just in France but across the world. And though it would be easy to see this as yet another blip in a long history of using luxury products as a stand-in for social and economic injustice (one that stretches back to the French Revolution), it is also a response to a peculiarly contemporary reality the luxury industry itself has created.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/21/style/france-riots-luxury-dior-hermes.html