Dear all,
Luxury brands are famous for cultivating an impression of exclusivity. This week's data has a theme: brands making exactly one of something.
Kith and BMW built a one-of-one X5 show car that is not for sale, and 5.5M people watched it anyway. Bugatti drove the DESTRIER, commissioned by a single customer, onto the lawn at The Quail. Koenigsegg premiered the CCGT1 as a tribute to a racing project it never finished 20 years ago. Three cars that will never see a dealership did more than 8M views together.
Most of this happened around Monterey Car Week, which went from 6 posts to 120 in a week on the Luxury feed. Check the trend section for more details.
I hope you'll enjoy this week's edition and that it will make you think ...
What The Luxe?!
Cheers,
PS: feel free to hit reply to leave a comment, I read and answer every message
Data provided by Submarine.ai the Frontier Insights Lab that boost your business and make your content irresistible.
Top Brands this week
This week vs last 8-week average
 | 1. Kate Spade 路 35.4x its usual week |
Kate Spade launched its fall campaign as a game of hide and seek. Tyla, Bretman Rock and a dozen other creators hide from the camera, and the caption asks if anyone has seen them. The campaign film did 4.3M views on Instagram, and the TikTok cut added 385K. The brand's average week over the summer was 137K views.
 | 2. Kith 路 26.8x its usual week |
Kith revealed an X5 designed with BMW, a one-of-one show car that is not for sale. The reveal did 3.6M views on Instagram, and the teaser posted the day before did 1.9M. Kith's usual week is around 206K views.
 | 3. Plaza Ath茅n茅e 路 10.9x its usual week |
The Paris palace published 2 posts, which is its normal pace. One of them, a film where Paris slows down and romance takes the lead, did 1.4M views. The hotel's average week is 144K.
Top Videos
The most viewed Luxury & Beauty videos of the week
 | TikTok |
r.e.m. beauty 路 5.5M views
Ariana Grande trades fidget toys with fans again. The first video did 7.9M views last week.
Marc Jacobs 路 3.1M views
Episode one of The Swap, a fiction series where two identical bags leave a runway show in the wrong hands.
Burberry 路 2.5M views
The creator Rastarolla rides his penny farthing on a Burberry set.
 |
Audi 路 12.1M views
The wrap-up video of the 10th Audi Summer Tour, filmed with FC Bayern Munich.
Taj Hotels 路 10.2M views
A film about the many ways to experience India. The account has 493K followers, and this video reached 20 times that number.
Kate Spade 路 4.3M views
The hide and seek fall campaign, the same post that puts the brand at the top of this issue.
 | YouTube |
Rolex 路 1.5M views
A portrait of Rosa V谩squez Espinoza, a Peruvian scientist and laureate of the 2026 Rolex Awards, filmed in the Amazon.
Koenigsegg 路 1.4M views
The world premiere of the CCGT1, presented at the Koenigsegg Villa in Monterey during Car Week.
McLaren 路 426K views
The McL 6GT, a concept presented as a return to Bruce McLaren's original road car idea.
Top Trends
Zoom: luxury went to Monterey
Monterey Car Week gathered the car world in California: the auctions, the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance and The Quail. We've analyzed each post from a Luxury and Beauty account that names the event or one of its venues.
Last week there were 6. This week there are 120.
- Bugatti gave the DESTRIER, a car commissioned by a single customer, its first public appearance at The Quail. That post did 3.4M views, the most watched Car Week post of the week.
- Koenigsegg premiered the CCGT1 at its own villa in Monterey, 703K views. Ferrari drove the 849 Testarossa down 17-Mile Drive, 587K. McLaren put the F1, P1 and W1 in one photo, 462K. Aston Martin made 3 DB12 S models for the 75th Pebble Beach Concours, 432K.
- The week is not only for car brands. Peninsula Hotels co-hosts The Quail, and its post about the gathering did 759K views, more than most of the cars.
Car Week happens once a year, and almost all of its posts land in this single week. Recap posts will trail into next week, and then the count goes back to single digits until next August.
Also on the radar
Kaia Gerber
40 posts name Kaia Gerber this week, against 4 or 5 per week in early July. She is a September cover star and plays in Ryan Murphy's series The Shards, and the brands around her are using the moment. NARS, where she is global ambassador, built its new lip liner campaign on her look. The Perfumer's Story created a perfume for her character in the series. Prada dressed her for the show's Berlin premiere earlier this month.
NAD+
NAD+ is a molecule linked to skin aging, and it is moving from supplements into skincare. 16 posts this week, and a slow climb since mid-July. Lemme launched NAD+ capsules for skin longevity this week. Obagi built its AGE CTRL complex around the same molecule, and Bliss sells an NAD+ peptide serum.
National Relaxation Day
The calendar day has become a beauty marketing moment. Laura Geller ran a giveaway around being on Do Not Disturb, 51K views. Est茅e Lauder paired a cup of tea with Advanced Night Repair. Peter Thomas Roth told its followers not to text.
If you've enjoyed What The Luxe, share it with a friend. If you've hated it, share it with an enemy.
Data provided by Submarine.ai. Numbers cover August 10 to August 16, 2026, from 16,339 posts published by Luxury & Beauty brands and creators on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Each brand is compared to its own average week over the previous 8 weeks. The Monterey chart counts the event and its venues, under every spelling, as one group. View counts were collected between August 16 and August 18, so the most recent posts are still gaining views.
