Luxury Briefing: Pinterest’s luxury pitch is AI discovery, not AI answers

On Monday, the company reported first-quarter revenue of $1 billion, up 18% year over year, and 631 million global monthly active users. On the call, CEO Bill Ready said Pinterest now sees more than 80 billion monthly searches, about half of which are a shopping query — he compared that to search competitor ChatGPT, where only 2% of prompts are commercial.

“When a user knows what they want, but cannot quite describe it, an image can do what text cannot,” Ready said on the call.

For luxury brands, the opportunity lies in influence. “There’s a very natural fit between Pinterest and luxury because luxury is such a considered purchase,” said Heather Clark, head of fashion and luxury at Pinterest U.K. “Our role is to help luxury brands show up early, when taste is still forming.”

Pinterest is now trying to make the inspiration it provides more measurable. Its AI ad suite, Pinterest Performance+, launched widely in 2024 and now accounts for around 30% of its lower-funnel revenue. It automates parts of bidding, budgeting, targeting and creative, requiring about 50% fewer inputs than a standard campaign, according to Pinterest. Currently, luxury marketers are navigating lower spending by aspirational shoppers; pressure to reach younger, high-intent shoppers; and growing questions about how AI search tools will reshape product discovery. Pinterest’s challenge is proving that a platform still associated with moodboards can become a worthwhile investment for luxury brands.

“A big part of what’s next is helping luxury brands use AI in a way that still feels premium, curated and relevant,” Clark said. “More luxury advertisers are using Pinterest Performance+ because it helps them find the right audiences and improve efficiency without losing control.”

Pinterest cited Prada as an early Performance+ test case. Prada’s use case was straightforward: The brand wanted to support a leather goods launch while driving both shopping actions and site traffic across two markets.

In the U.S., Prada optimized toward checkout and add-to-cart actions. In Germany, the focus was on site traffic and lower click costs. According to Pinterest, the test compared Prada’s traditional, more narrowly targeted campaign setup with broader AI-led targeting based on Pinterest signals like searches, saves, Pins and engagement. Pinterest said the AI-led campaigns outperformed the control campaigns: In the U.S., checkout return on ad spend was 2.9x and checkout cost per action fell 64%; in Germany, cost per click fell 49% and engagement rose 88%.

Clark said Pinterest’s AI advantage stems from its Taste Graph. The Graph is the data system Pinterest uses to understand patterns in what people search, save, Pin and engage with, mapping 80 billion signals a month. “That’s especially powerful in luxury, because saves reflect considered behavior, more than just a ‘like’ does. And shoppers often know what they like when they see it, even if they don’t yet have the words for it,” she said.

Other platforms have been building around saved and collected content for years: Instagram launched Saves in 2016 and Collections in 2017, Google expanded AI-assisted Collections in Search in 2020, and TikTok added Shared Collections in 2025. Pinterest argues that saving is more central to its platform because users are actively planning, not just reacting.

“On the AI front, Pinterest is completely different from chat-based engines because it is discovery-based search, so it takes users on a journey,” Clark added. “If a customer looks up a pink Valentino dress, the platform will then suggest images of either pink looks or looks in the style of modern glamour or other parameters based on the customer’s existing search behavior and profile,” rather than just similar looks.

Ready made a similar case on the earnings call, saying general-purpose chatbot platforms begin with “a blank screen and a command line interface,” while Pinterest centers the journey on shoppable content, product comparisons and purchase paths. He also said Pinterest wants brands and retailers “to gain a customer, not just a transaction.”

And it is not the only way the platform is courting luxury brands. Clark said the platform is building editorial-style in-person event experiences around its themed reports, including its wedding-, Gen-Z- and men’s-focused reports, with a luxury report planned for later this year. Brands can sponsor those moments, with their Pins appearing in curated trend selections, as well as the events themselves. “Luxury brands want to know not just what people are looking for now, but what they’re going to want next,” Clark said. 

Pinterest has multiple luxury case studies showing that the platform can support more than moodboarding. Ralph Lauren used Pinterest in 2023 to promote “Ralph Lauren: A Way of Living”, a book marking the 40th anniversary of Ralph Lauren Home. The brand built Pinterest boards around chapters from the book, using home, travel and design imagery. According to Pinterest, the campaign generated 25 million organic impressions, a 46% average video view rate and a 35% lower CPM than traditional interest-based targeting.

And Jimmy Choo and Christian Louboutin have used Pinterest to promote launches. Jimmy Choo used the platform to reach brides-to-be after engagement season, as they were researching accessories and saving wedding ideas. Christian Louboutin used Pinterest for its 2024 Button Flower Blossoms sneaker campaign, targeting Gen Z with a focus on fashion and art. According to Pinterest, Jimmy Choo’s campaign beat the category click-through benchmark by 15%, while Louboutin’s delivered an 86% lower cost per completed video view, with half the audience under 35.

The question is whether those examples represent a broader reallocation of luxury media budgets or a set of strong case studies from brands already well-suited to Pinterest’s visual, planning-led environment. Pinterest is also still working to close the gap between engagement and revenue. On the earnings call, Ready said Pinterest has increased the number of clicks it sends advertisers by more than 5x over roughly three years, but ad revenue has not grown at the same rate, suggesting the platform still has work to do to monetize the shopping traffic it drives. 

A saved image or wedding board may signal intent, but marketers need to prove how often that intent becomes a sale, appointment or higher-value customer.

Earnings: Coach is approaching $1 billion in annual marketing spend as it builds its Gen-Z flywheel

It was a big week in earnings. According to Telsey Advisory Group, Tapestry’s quarter beat expectations across sales, gross margin and operating margin, led by Coach revenue growth of 31.5%, well above analysts’ expected 19.9%. Tapestry’s May 7 earnings showed that Coach’s growth is more about its heavily funded customer-acquisition engine than its handbag heat, driven by the ever-popular Tabby. The brand added 2 million new customers in the quarter, as Tapestry increased marketing spend by around 50% year over year, shifting more dollars to upper-funnel brand-building. 

Coach CEO Todd Kahn said the brand is “approaching $1 billion annual spend in marketing,” calling it part of a “Coachenomics flywheel” that few competitors can match. Coach is driving growth through fewer, bigger handbag families, including Tabby, Brooklyn, Empire and Chelsea, while holding onto its key price position. As CFO Scott Roe put it, “We value that $200-$500 price point. That said, we still have a lot of headroom.” According to Kahn, Coach is getting set to do more in Europe, for example.

Revolve has a $343 million quarter, builds on its brand machine

Revolve also reported first-quarter net sales this week, of $343 million, up 16% year over year, marking its fastest growth rate in nearly four years. Revolve sales were up 15%, FWRD’s were up 17%, and international sales were up 20%. The company is now leaning harder into its owned brands, celebrity-led launches and physical retail. 

Its new Revolve Los Angeles label, launched in March and fronted by Bella Hadid, has generated more than 200 million impressions, according to the brand, while Cardi B’s Grow-Good Beauty sold out in less than an hour during both its presale and official launch. “Our top line is accelerating, brand heat is building, and customer connection is strengthening,” said co-CEO Michael Mente on the call. 

And the company is not done yet. “Revolve L.A. is really the beginning of multiple Revolve-oriented brands,” Mente said, adding that the company plans to enter “very high-margin categories” over the next 12-24 months.

News to know

• Italian unions Filctem Cgil, Femca Cisl and Uiltec Uil have called a May 20 strike across Kering’s Italian companies, demanding the withdrawal of 54 planned layoffs at Alexander McQueen and more details on Kering’s “ReconKering” reorganization plan.
• U.K. department store Harvey Nichols is dedicating its entire fourth floor to wellness as part of its three-year Knightsbridge refurbishment. It will include an added Reformer Pilates studio, aesthetic and therapeutic treatments, functional smoothies, supplements, and athleisure.
• The Trump administration has begun issuing refunds, with interest, to some importers that paid $166 billion in tariffs that the Supreme Court declared unlawful, though millions of import entries have so far been rejected from the initial refund process.

Listen in

On the Glossy Podcast, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi and editor-in-chief Jill Manoff discuss “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” unpacking the sequel’s reflection of fashion’s post-print media landscape, and its heavier use of real-life industry cameos and luxury brand placement, compared to the original film. Listen here.

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