Since opening our beta, the RankBee team has collected a large amount of prompt data from our early adopters – and one of the emerging trends is how ChatGPT and other LLMs perceive luxury brands.
In the same way that we humans look at luxury as a balance of name and quality, LLMs use that same reasoning when examining whether a consumer is paying for a durable, quality heirloom or a simply a label.
Every Brand Starts with a Blank Slate
LLMs don’t have a natural programming for or against luxury goods or their buyers. These systems are blank slates to be filled by the world’s available content and while LLMs ingest the works of Karl Marx, they also take in the latest fashion news and influencer recommendations. That is to say that if a LLM became human, it would be just as likely to go on strike as it would to shop SoHo’s boutiques.
Thus the conclusions and perceptions below are LLMs drawing broad conclusions based on the billions of writeups, posts, reviews, user experiences and ephemeral musings available for it to reference.
Brands focused heavily on quality, utility and making the purchase and ownership experience truly memorable will see that reflected naturally in the content their customers produce. However brands that have focused on building a label first and the rest of the experience second can find themselves exposed.
How RankBee Scored Each Brand
Below is table comparing three of the top brands in luxury fashion with our RankBee AI score across key consideration points for luxury products. Hermès is the highest rated brand in luxury whereas Gucci is toward the bottom of the list for major luxury marks.
While Chanel scores very high and is on the cusp of being a top 5 brand, concerns raised over the last two years in both news articles and key influencer forums over quality permeated the data and for that reason knocked it down just barely below the top tier.
(Want to know what LLMs like ChatGPT are saying about your brand and how that impacts your visibility? We can help)
AI’s Highest Rated Luxury Brands
The following brands scored highest in RankBee’s AI brand power metric which takes into account multiple output factors across LLMs and key purchasing considerations to determine their score.
Note: The brand, quality and you’re paying for summaries you see below are composites generated by the LLMs based on the total prompt data collected.
Hermès | 9.6
Brand: The ultimate in luxury. Think Birkins, Kellys, and a decades-deep waitlist. Screams quiet power.
Quality: Impeccable. Hand-stitched leather, precision, and heritage craftsmanship at its peak.
You’re paying for: Legacy, exclusivity, and craftsmanship that outlives trends.
Bottega Veneta | 9.5
Brand: Stealth wealth with a modern edge. Known for the signature Intrecciato weave and minimal branding.
Quality: Superb leather and construction, especially under the newer creative direction.
You’re paying for: Texture, taste, and a logo-free flex.
Brunello Cucinelli | 9.5
Brand: The “King of Cashmere.” Understated, refined, and morally polished (literally runs a “humanistic” company).
Quality: Pristine materials, subtle tailoring, and that soft-spoken luxe vibe.
You’re paying for: Feel-good fashion—ethically made, ultra-luxe basics.
Loro Piana | 9.5
Brand: Peak Italian quiet luxury. Whispered among those who know. No logos, just pure fabric elitism.
Quality: Unmatched textiles—cashmere, vicuña, baby camel hair—woven like a dream.
You’re paying for: The feel of luxury. Softness, subtlety, and supreme understatement.
The Row | 9.4
Brand: Olsen twins’ brainchild turned cult minimalist label. Fashion editors’ and insiders’ uniform.
Quality: Tailored to perfection, rich fabrics, and that rare “nonchalant but $$$” vibe.
You’re paying for: Understated elegance with architectural precision.
The most interesting note is that the top 4 brands have existed for 70+ years with each scoring very high for both quality, heritage and status whereas The Row has only been around since 2006.
AI’s Lower Rated Luxury Brands
What you’ll notice is a mix of old world and new world labels – some of which revel in their perceptions and while others are works in progress when it comes to defining the next chapters of their brand story.
Gucci | 8.2
Brand: Lots of mass production, especially under Alessandro Michele’s reign when things got maximalist and heavily logo-driven.
Quality: Accessories and shoes can be solid, but not always commensurate with the price.
You’re paying for: A loud, recognizable label.
Christian Louboutin | 8.1
Brand: Red bottoms have icon status, but they’re known for being painful and not particularly durable.
Quality: They look beautiful but comfort and wearability? Not their strong suit.
You’re paying for: The red sole.
Balenciaga | 7.2
Brand: Wild price tags for items like destroyed sneakers or t-shirts with minimal design.
Quality: Sometimes decent, sometimes questionable — definitely inconsistent.
You’re paying for: Hype, irony, and edgy branding.
Off-White | 6.8
Brand: Basic tees and hoodies with quotation marks and logos for $$$.
Quality: Streetwear-level; decent but not luxury-tier.
You’re paying for: Virgil Abloh’s legacy and street cred.
Supreme | 6.6
Brand: T-shirts and accessories marked up 10x on resale.
Quality: Meh. Often Hanes-quality tees with branding.
You’re paying for: Exclusivity, hype, and resale culture.
How does this impact the bottom line?
For many of the brands on the lower end of the scoring spectrum, this likely won’t change anything among their core customer group. Brands like Supreme and Off-White have communities of raving fans who live and breathe their brand’s ethos and would likely look at some of the negative factors and shrug them off as part of the overall experience.
However these scores, high or low will have three key impacts over time:
Brand Visibility in LLMs: AI looks to provide the most contextually relevant answer for a prompt and low brand scores mean that opportunities to appear consistently for all product lines, even for legacy brands, could be reduced. However smaller labels achieving higher scores over time with the right mix of quality and experience can overindex relative to their reach and revenue.
New to Brand Consumers: People saving for a luxury purchase and paring down their list of brands for that first bag, outfit, etc … could leverage AI as a litmus test for whether buying a specific brand or item will provide the benefits they hope to achieve and poor marks could shift prospective buyers to other labels.
Long term brand trends: AI adds another layer of complexity for brand and PR teams to measure perception and when LLM data reinforces declines or slides in experience, it will further exacerbate efforts to get things back on track.
So How Do Brands Fix Their Perception?
ChatGPT is ultimately a reflection of available data and not inherent bias. Brands need to open their eyes to the fact that their customers and their individual experiences in aggregate have the power to significantly shape brand perception to a degree that outweighs what can purely be controlled from a PR, advertising and messaging perspective.
The first step is to understand how LLMs perceive a best in class product for your category and once you have that foundation you can then see how your brand is perceived, what sources drive those perceptions and how high or low scores are ultimately impacting your ability to be found when people search in LLMs.
Fixing perception requires that brand and marketing teams work together to define and execute on specific action items and messaging changes throughout their ecosystem. Brands that can get these groups aligned will find themselves with a significant advantage in AI search.
Exploring RankBee and Bespoke AI Research
The RankBee brand power score will be coming in a future release of the app and in the meantime if your brand is looking for bespoke research on consumer perception, content gaps, reputation blind spots and optimization, feel free to email me will@rankbee.ai and I’ll be happy to develop a custom plan to help your brand take control in LLMs.
This post originally appeared on my own LinkedIn