Cross‑Sector Trend Analysis: Fashion, Watches & Fine Art

Over the past three years, high‑end auctions have transformed from discreet marketplaces into visible stages where brands, collectors, and corporations perform their ambitions. Two dominant strategies drive this shift: the auction as a generator of brand capital and publicity, and the auction as a sourcing mechanism for profitable resale. Increasingly, these modes are converging — one feeding the other.

Auction as PR: From Fashion to Fine Art

The most photogenic examples of auction‑as‑PR have emerged in fashion and design. In July 2025, Jane Birkin’s personal Hermès prototype sold at Sotheby’s Paris for €8.6 million ($10.1 million). The winning bidder, Shinsuke Sakimoto — CEO of Japan’s Valuence Holdings — framed the acquisition not as a commercial purchase but as a brand‑building performance. The bag will not re‑enter the market; instead, it will serve as a travelling emblem of “circular luxury,” anchoring exhibitions and marketing campaigns.

Here, the hammer price becomes a calculated media investment — measured in advertising value, brand association, and cultural positioning rather than sales margin.

The same playbook is increasingly visible in the art market.

• In 2024, Justin Sun paid $6.2 million for Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian — the duct‑taped banana — and staged its public consumption. The act was the artwork; the sale was the stage.

• In 2019, David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) fetched $90.3 million at Christie’s — acquired by a private collector who turned the win into a cultural signal, lending it to major museums within weeks.

• In 2022, the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s acquisition of several Monet Nymphéas canvases at auction — reportedly for upwards of $50 million combined — doubled as both a curatorial coup and a reinforcement of the foundation’s positioning as a cultural tastemaker aligned with LVMH’s luxury narrative.

These were not just acquisitions; they were public gestures designed to anchor a brand, institution, or individual identity in the cultural conversation.

Auction for Resale: The Engine Behind the Spectacle

Alongside the theatre of PR wins runs the older, still‑vital model: buying at auction to resell. In the watch market, this remains the commercial backbone. Dealers in Geneva routinely target high‑demand references — Rolex Daytona “Paul Newman” models, Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711s, early F.P. Journe pieces — to move immediately into Asia and North America, where appetite and pricing are higher.

The fine art trade operates much the same way:

• In 2023, an early Yayoi Kusama infinity net painting was bought at Phillips London for £980,000 and quickly resold through a Hong Kong dealer for more than HK$16 million.

• In 2024, a rare Gerhard Richter Abstraktes Bild from the 1980s sold in a less competitive Paris sale for €5.8 million, only to appear months later at an Asian fair with a price tag approaching €9 million.

• The rediscovery of J.M.W. Turner’s The Rising Squall — bought for £400, restored, authenticated, and later sold for £1.9 million — remains a textbook case of low‑entry acquisition transforming into a seven‑figure outcome.

Here, the value is transactional: the spread between hammer price and resale price. Yet in high‑profile flips, the PR halo can sweeten the sale, helping to shift other inventory by association.