The Week in Shopping: A Totally Unscientific, Still Telling Holiday Retail Survey

December 5, 2025

Now that we’ve entered the Super Bowl season for shopping, let’s take a completely unscientific, somewhat random stroll through the retail landscape to find out what’s selling and who’s buying. For starters, how did things really go over the first Black Friday-to-Cyber Monday held under the influence of the second Trump administration and a robust but possibly overvalued market? If we go by the one-and-a-half-hour wait to enter the parking lot at the upscale Livermore Outlets mall outside San Francisco—just to drop off shoppers—Christmas might be Grinch-free this year. 

Getting down to business, there were almost 203 million shoppers over the Thanksgiving weekend, up 3 percent from last year, according to the National Retail Federation. The Cyber Monday haul was $14.25 billion, up 7 percent year over year, according to Adobe Analytics. Positive momentum, sure, but these numbers don’t tell us where people are shopping, and whether they’ll continue to spend through the all-important end of year.

A good place to start is high-end boutique Kirna Zabête, which saw its strongest sales in Miami, Palm Beach, and East Hampton, particularly among brands like Miu Miu, Saint Laurent, Gabriella Hearst, and Bottega Veneta. Founder Beth Buccini told me that Nour Hammour, a recent Line Sheet subject, is nearly sold out. While revenue was down from last year, higher margins strengthened the business, with in-store shopping outperforming last year. Ear cuffs and necklaces also sold well, both as gifts and guilty pleasures for oneself.

Over at Hollister, sales associates were running around with Apple devices, loading customers’ virtual carts with items that had already sold out on the floor, and reassuring shoppers that the cable-knit sweater or zip-up hoodie would indeed show up at their homes within a few days. Foot traffic at Leset was also strong, even though the brand was down to forecast leading into Thanksgiving weekend. (An online sale overperformed expectations by 25 percent, according to founder Lili Chemla, who told me, “It seems like the shopper was definitely waiting for the sale this year.”) 

Inside the store, many shoppers were opting to try on items and figure out their size, then leaving empty-handed, preferring to buy them online later—perhaps when it would be easier to see Leset’s assortment of colors from their wardrobe basics of knit t-shirts, silk separates, and knitwear. In any case, shoppers stocked up on Margo t-shirts, the newer Nando slim-fit long sleeve, Kyoto carpenter pants, and Barb wide-leg silk pants. 

Margaux, the D.T.C. shoe brand, runs one sale a year, always on Black Friday, per founders Alexa Buckley and Sarah Pierson, whom I ran into last night at their store opening on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. They use the 20 percent off sitewide sale as a customer acquisition tool, and saw customer acquisition grow by 80 percent this year. Last year, they told me, they acquired their most loyal shoppers during Q4—particularly through Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In other words, folks came for the deals and stuck around when they went back to full price.

In the Line of Beauty

Gen Alpha swamped Sephora, many with cranky moms (perhaps coming off ketamine highs?) or glassy-eyed divorced dads in tow. Signs at my local Sephora noted they were running low on pennies, surely turning a few cash purchases into tense dust-ups. The Retail Industry Leaders Association recently published a survey that found almost 25 percent of major retailers have more than 1,000 stores that are currently without pennies, and most are eating the cost by rounding down for customers—likely to show up in retailers’ bottom lines later.

Meanwhile, more weathered shoppers are buying those red facial lights, despite the high price point and waning novelty. “Red light masks” were a top trending search on the LTK platform, and the CurrentBody Skin LED Light Therapy Mask, Ziip Halo Microcurrent Facial Device, and Omnilux Contour Face Mask became the top three converting links for Black Friday through Cyber Monday on ShopMy, according to the platform. Have at it, gals! Retailers love big-ticket items, of course, and hundreds of creators linked to Lyma’s $2,695 “patented cold” Laser at Violet Grey, which was also in the top 10 for ShopMy for the holiday weekend.

When it came to social commerce, TikTok Shop rang up $570 million between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, an increase of 73 percent versus last year, according to Charm.io, which tracks D.T.C. brands. Black Friday showed the strongest sales, while Cyber Monday was just the third-strongest day of the five, suggesting people aren’t yet willing to TikTok-shop at work or in school. 

Nearly 20 percent of TikTok Shop’s business was driven by beauty and personal care, at an average unit price of $21.88—with impulse buys, not the more expensive items, converting via traditional affiliate platforms. Beauty’s top performer on TikTok Shop was QVC, the sleepy legacy shopping channel that Barry Diller turned into a TV-commerce retail phenomenon back in the ’90s, and which recently made the smart decision to meet Gen Z on the tiny screens on which they live.