After the party comes the cleanup. One week ago, RH chairman and CEO Gary Friedman was debuting the company’s Paris gallery to a celebrity-studded crowd. Yesterday, he faced a less glamorous task: discussing RH’s second-quarter earnings with Wall Street analysts. The numbers were decent, but you could tell Friedman’s heart was still in the City of Light—the word Paris appeared 46 times in a transcript of the call.

RH had a reasonable quarter, showing incremental improvement across much of its business. Revenue increased 8.4 percent to $899 million, $51.7 million of which fell to the bottom line as profit. The company’s free cash flow—which had gone negative for a quarter last year—ticked up to $81 million, and its operating margins are trending upward. These were not blockbuster results, but not bad, especially against the backdrop of what Friedman calls “the worst housing market in 50 years.”

Still, RH slightly missed a few analysts’ expectations and lowered its projections for the remainder of the year. The company also remains perched atop $2.5 billion in debt and holds just shy of $1 billion in unsold inventory—both considerations for Wall Street to chew on. RH stock fell roughly 13 percent in after-hours trading, but then popped back up, shaving half of its losses. All in all, a muted reaction.

“Muted” was not the tone when it came to tariffs (mentioned 54 times on the call). Thus far, Friedman has mostly adopted a happy warrior stance toward the president’s trade policies, proclaiming that RH was better positioned than anyone to weather the disruption. Trump’s late-August announcement of forthcoming furniture-specific tariffs seems to have flipped a switch.

“God forbid they throw another tariff on furniture,” Friedman said. “Come talk to us. Talk to me. Call me. I run the biggest luxury home brand in the world. … This makes no sense for the U.S. economy.”

He was quick to point out that RH itself would be fine, but opined that more tariffs could lead to massive job loss and devastate the furniture ecosystem. “I don’t want to win because … our competitors, who are really good, hardworking people, get wiped out,” he said. “You lose 15 percent of the people that are presenting at High Point Market or Las Vegas Market, those markets will shut down. They’ll be bankrupt. I really don’t think anybody is thinking about the math. There’s no one that’s making wood furniture at scale, metal furniture at scale [domestically]. If there’s another round of tariffs on furniture, I mean, long term, it will be good for us. It’s really bad for a lot of people in High Point.”

Whether or not there are new tariffs, Friedman was clear that existing import duties would lead to higher prices throughout the rest of the year, an apt pronouncement given yesterday’s consumer price index data showing 9.5 percent inflation on kitchen, dining room and living room furniture for the 12 months ending in August. “I think there’s going to be big furniture inflation in the second half everywhere,” he said. “I don’t know how anybody gets around it.”

Like most RH earnings announcements, there was plenty more in the grab bag, including the revelation—buried in the company’s public filing—that it had paid $32 million to buy Los Angeles–based trade brands Formations and Dennis & Leen. Its other recent acquisition, Michael Taylor Designs, didn’t make the paperwork, suggesting the possibility that RH had picked up the company for a song.

Europe was also a big topic. RH England, despite its remote location and a skeptical reception by English design cognoscenti, is on track for $37 million to $39 million in demand this year—promising numbers in advance of the company’s forthcoming London gallery. Overall, though, the company’s European invasion has been costly, and Friedman admitted the execution has had its flaws. Munich, in particular, appears to be a challenging location. But he held fast to the theory that success in Europe was key to the company’s global ambitions: “I heard someone say that [LVMH CEO] Bernard Arnault was asked, ‘How do you build a brand in China?’ and his answer was, ‘You build great stores in Paris, London and New York.’”

To that point: Paris. While it’s far too early to assess the gallery’s financial performance, Friedman lingered on the location’s 18-foot cast medallion doors, “soaring” atrium, and 19th century cast bronze caryatid by Louis-Félix Chabaud—not to mention a two-story glass structure that houses a stand-alone interior design studio. While tariffs had him vexed, Paris had him rapt.

“I told the team: ‘If only for a moment, we kind of broke through and poked our head up at the top of the luxury mountain,’” he said. “‘Now it’s up to us to just plant a flag up there, right?’”