Fashion pulse: Lithuania — March 2026

Consumer prices

Lithuanian headline CPI jumped to +4.8 percent year-on-year in March 2026 per Statistics Lithuania, a sharp acceleration from +3.6 percent in February. Monthly, prices rose +1.5 percent (February: +1.1 percent). The fashion basket went the opposite way: clothing and footwear inflation eased to +0.4 percent year-on-year in March from +1.1 percent in February, per the State Data Agency's press commentary which explicitly flagged clothing-and-footwear cooling alongside food moderation. With a +4.4 percentage-point gap between headline and the fashion basket (4.8 vs 0.4), Lithuania has one of the widest fashion-to-headline spreads in the EU batch this month.

Retail sector

Total Lithuanian retail volume grew approximately +5.7 percent year-on-year in March 2026 per Eurostat — a recovery from February's +2.9 percent and closer to January's +9.1 percent (revised). The Statistics Lithuania March detail includes textiles, clothing and footwear retail at +1.9 percent year-on-year (up from +0.5 percent in February) — the clearest sign of fashion-specific demand picking up. Online and mail-order retail ran at +21.2 percent (Feb +20.8); non-food +8.1 percent (Feb +4.3); pharmaceuticals/cosmetics +9.4 (Feb +6.7). March retail is preliminary and subject to revision.

Monetary policy and currency

The ECB held the deposit facility rate at 2.00 percent through March. The euro weakened 2.25 percent versus the US dollar in March (monthly mean 1.1558 vs February's 1.1824), raising landed cost for Lithuanian fashion importers sourcing from Asia and the US.

What it means for fashion

Lithuania presents a constructive March setup for fashion retail: the textiles-clothing-footwear retail sub-sector accelerated to +1.9 percent year-on-year (from +0.5 percent February) while clothing-basket prices stayed soft (+0.4 percent CPI YoY) — meaning real-volume growth in fashion is outpacing the value-growth print. Online retail running at +21 percent year-on-year is the structural channel story. For Inditex, H&M, and Reserved operating through the Apranga group's Vilnius network (rebranded to Soulz; Nasdaq Baltic still lists ticker APG1L under the Apranga name), the combination of cooling fashion-basket inflation alongside accelerating fashion-retail volume is supportive for Q2 unit economics — even with the headline-inflation backdrop running well above the euro-area aggregate.

Note: this article combines the most recent official data available at the time of writing. Reporting lags differ by indicator and country, so not all figures refer to the same month. Each data point is labelled with its reference period.