Fashion’s chief executive officers are acknowledging a far more cautious consumer within the U.S.  

While the headline economic readings might show an incredibly resilient shopper who’s spending their way through inflation and better rates of interest, the on-the-ground take from retail CEOs this week showed something else. 

For consumers, being willing to pony up for costlier groceries is something different than refreshing the wardrobe.

And in a flurry of quarterly updates this week, a few of fashion’s biggest players stood by their plans and expressed their very own individual optimism, but in addition sketched a more-dire tackle the buyer at large. 

Hopes and challenges remain. 

Unemployment continues to be ultra-low at 3.4 percent, however the Federal Reserve is seen as intent on changing that with higher rates of interest. 

Readings of consumer confidence show shoppers feel all straight away, but expect tougher times ahead. 

And comparisons begin to get well because the yr moves on, but beating last yr’s lousy results can be a hole sort of victory. 

Here, how CEOs are describing the buyer landscape now of their quarterly conference calls with Wall Street. 

John Idol, chairman and CEO, Carpi Holdings

“Asia has been going very, thoroughly for the corporate…After which in [Europe, the Middle East and Africa], we’re more than happy with what we see happening there… Once we have a look at the Americas, we definitely saw a sequential decline in North America. We saw it first within the North American malls, and it wasn’t just the Michael Kors piece of the business. We saw it on the posh side as well with Versace and Jimmy Choo…. What we’re feeling is that the buyer, who was feeling superb about their financial situation in calendar 2022, has been more conservative at first of calendar ’23.”

Martin Waters, CEO, Victoria’s Secret & Co.

“I don’t think that now we have a single silver-bullet answer for why the market [in North America] turned so dramatically between Q4 and Q1, but we see it within the numbers across the board with a high single-digit decrease available in the market… And now the cycle has moved a bit bit … there are other things to spend on, including beauty and outerwear and holidays and vacation and going out for food and beverage and all of those things. So there’s no single reason or a structural reason why the category overall is down, but we’re confident that it’s. And now we have to do as much as we are able to to get traffic into the stores with that difficult environment.” 

Jeff Gennette, chairman and CEO, Macy’s Inc.

“Demand trends began to worsen in mid-March and further decelerated in April. We consider cooler temperatures and headlines surrounding layoffs and the banking crisis were aspects, but so were the compounding effect of some previously identified macro headwinds. The U.S. consumer, particularly at Macy’s, pulled back greater than we anticipated as they reallocated spend to food, essentials and services. Now we have planned our business for the rest of the yr, assuming mid-March through April macro headwinds proceed and potentially worsen.”

Erik Nordstrom, CEO, Nordstrom Inc. 

“As we’ve seen since June of last yr, customer demand continued to be pressured given the present macroeconomic backdrop, which impacted our top-line results across each banners [Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack]. By comparison, the primary quarter of 2022 benefited from a powerful pent-up demand for a return to occasions because the pandemic receded. In consequence, our year-over-year sales comparisons for Q1 were difficult, but those comparisons get progressively easier as we proceed through the yr.”

Stefan Larsson, CEO, PVH Corp.

“In a standard yr, with all this traction [from the PVH+ strategic plan], we might have most probably flown this through because we keep gaining this traction all across the corporate. Having done this a couple of times, I do know when that inflection point happens whenever you begin to see traction just constructing. But at the identical time, we’re prudent. We’re in it for the long-term value creation for shareholders, and we recognize we’re in a choppy macro. In order that’s why we decided to — although we beat [first-quarter earnings projections] — we recognize the choppy macro, and we decided to reaffirm the [annual] guidance.”