French Fashion Sales Stabilize in March with 0.4% Growth

Fashion in France is breathing. The fashion retail trade in France has closed March with a return to growth, albeit minimal. The sector posted a positive performance of just 0.43% in the third month, although it managed to put an end to two consecutive months of declines.

The March figure is therefore the first positive figure for the whole of 2025. In particular, fashion retail sales recorded a first year-on-year drop in January of 1.2%, which was aggravated a month later with another decline of 2.4%, according to data published by the French Statistics Institute (Insee, in its French acronym).

Despite this improvement in the evolution of the fashion retail trade, sales are still far from posting rises similar to those recorded by the sector last year. In particular, in the last quarter of 2024, French fashion retail sales rose by 12.2% in September and by 5% in October. The sector, however, also recorded equally large declines in 2024, with the worst declines in July, down 5.2%, April, down 2.2%, and May, down 2.3%.

Fashion sales in France have achieved their first positive performance in 2025.

In a similar direction, although remaining negative, retail sales in the leather and footwear sector recorded a moderate fall of 0.03% in March. This contrasts with the 1.6% drop recorded by the sector in February, but also with the rise of almost 1% in January.

Over the last twelve months, footwear and leather sales have been characterized by a somewhat more irregular performance. Specifically, the sector has closed months such as August and September with a rise in sales of 8.8% and 5.7%, respectively, as well as with falls of 5% in July and 2.6% in April.

The poor performance of fashion contrasts with the good performance of retail sales in the French economy as a whole, which rose by 3.09% in March. The sector has now been on the rise for more than a year in a row, since a 0.4% drop in December 2023.