Europe’s luxury retailers may be coming back to form

to shop for sneakers, loafers and possibly handbags once inside the boutique.

“I am completely sessed,” Liu said.

The siblings expressed a deep admiration for Gucci’s Renaissance Man, its bearded and charismatic creative director, Alessandro Michele.

In just over two years, and with the help of Gucci’s chief executive, Marco Bizzarri, Michele has spearheaded a striking turnaround in fortunes for the once-beleaguered fashion house, forged around his colorful and maximalist aesthetic, slick leather goods collections and savvy use of social media. ob-

“I love the clothes and the advertising campaigns, but the bags are really why I am here,” said Julieta Vega, a tourist from Spain on a weekend trip. She already had three Gucci handbags, and added that every time she went abroad she visited the local Gucci store. “You never know what they might have there that you can’t get anywhere else,” Vega said.

Customers like Liu and Vega are propelling a resurgence for Gucci and its parent company.

Kering, which also owns brands like Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen, said that total like-for-like sales grew 26.5 percent year-onyear in the first six months of 2017 to 7.3 billion euros ($8.5 billion), while recurring operating income increased 57.1 percent to nearly 1.3 billion euros, both of which outperformed analysts’ estimates.

The results paint a markedly more positive picture than previous years for European luxury companies.

Louis Vuitton, for example, unveiled a wildly popular collaboration with the cult streetwear label Supreme last month, via limited-edition drops in pop-up stores around the world, a sales strategy embraced by under-25s. Gucci, which has a strong and varied digital base, was one of the first brands to display its shows on Snapchat and has said that millennials make up almost half its consumer base.