Insights and Analysis

2025 Retail and Fashion Holiday Guide

19 December 2025

As the holiday season ushers in its busiest months, retailers and fashion brands are confronting a marketplace reshaped by rapid technological disruption, shifting regulatory expectations, and increasingly savvy consumers. AI has taken on roles from behind-the-scenes efficiency and design tools to a front-line driver and instrument of customer engagement, marketing and payment facilitation. At the same time, regulators across the U.S., UK, EU, and Asia are accelerating rules around retailers' use and marketing of AI tools and revisiting existing regulations around data privacy, green claims, pricing, packaging, and platform conduct.

This year's guide brings together key legal and regulatory developments shaping the retail and fashion landscape this festive season. The insights that follow highlight the trends, risks, and opportunities most relevant as retailers close out the year and look ahead to 2026.

As the year draws to a close, this guide offers a timely overview of the legal trends affecting retailers this holiday season and into 2026.

Click image below to access the guide.

Authored by Kelly Tubman Hardy, Meryl Bernstein, Sahira Khwaja, John Salmon, Elizabeth Greaves, Jennifer Crust, Theresa Hager, Burkhart Goebel, Nico Kuhlmann, Johannes Großekettler, Lauren Cury, Brendan Quinn, Hadley Dreibelbis, PJ Kaur, Grace Gladdle, Jasmeet Ahuja, Kate Mancuso, Katie McMullan, Chantal van Dam, W. James Denvil, Alyssa Golay, Maria Luigia Franceschelli, Valerie Kenyon, Christiane Alpers, Vicki Kooner, Eshana Subherwal, Magdalena Bakowska, Hanns-Thilo von Spankeren, Olga Tocewicz, Reuben Vandercruyssen, Cynthia Staiger, Samantha Brinkhuis, Iris Toepoel, Micaela Bostrom, Elena Wiese, Julian Urban, Helen Xia, Stefaan Meuwissen, Grace Guo, Anna Kurian Shaw, Babette Dol, Stephanie Yonekura, Liam Naidoo, Khushaal Ved, and Catrin Norton.