With this Sunday marking the start of the Lunar New Year, major Western fashion houses are hoping that they – like the bunnies they’ve splashed across handbags, shoes and clothes to mark the occasion – will also benefit from an unexpected boost over the holiday season. season.
“In 2021, all the luxury brands were winning, but 2022 was a much tougher year — a real rollercoaster for brands with all the blockages… and consumer sentiment at an all-time low,” said Imke Wouters, Hong Kong-partner at Oliver Wyman. in a video call, adding: “There are still brands that are doing very well, but many are not doing so well, especially towards the end of (last) year.”
Mulberry’s Lunar New Year collection features the Dutch cartoon rabbit Miffy. Credit: Mercis bv
Mannequins with bunny headbands in the window of the Loewe store on New Bond Street in London, UK. Credit: Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg/Getty Images
But the latest report from Oliver Wyman suggests that, despite the increase, only 19% of Chinese still intend to travel over the festive period. Of these, about 88% will do so domestically, with roughly half traveling to visit family rather than for leisure.
The gradual return of travel could also reduce the disposable income available for fashion. According to Wouters, among the 1.5 million people who spent money on luxury goods in China in 2021, half did so for the first time. One of the reasons, she said, “is that they it is not travel,” meaning that they may now “have to make the same trade-off” between traveling and going shopping.
Stay or go?
However, the long-term question is not necessary whether Chinese consumers will start buying again – that is where they will do it.
Before the pandemic, about 70% of luxury consumption in the country took place abroad. Aside from the prestige associated with picking up goods in cities like Paris and Milan, the trip was a way to avoid the high domestic prices that resulted from China’s high import taxes.
Prada’s sister brand Miu Miu eschewed traditional red this year, a color that previously dominated luxury brands’ Lunar New Year campaigns. Credit: Miu Miu
There have been fundamental changes in the way Chinese customers and brands do business. As most of China’s luxury spending shifted to mainland stores during the pandemic, Western brands have spent the past three years investing in their mainland boutiques.
“The offering in mainland China has improved significantly in terms of the shopping experience, but also the level of service,” Wouters said, adding that the proportion of luxury spending happening overseas, rather than domestically, “will never return to what it was before. “
Brands are also finding new ways to interact with customers and organizing fashion shows in the country. In August 2020, when Louis Vuitton would normally present its spring-summer collection at Men’s Fashion Week in Paris, the French brand instead held a star-studded show on the banks of the Huangpu River in Shanghai. The likes of Dior and Prada have also hosted major shows in the country since the start of the pandemic.
Cultural understanding
The increasing nuance with which labels cater to Chinese audiences is reflected in this year’s collections, according to Bohan Qiu, whose Shanghai-based creative agency Boh Project works with fashion brands to appeal to mainland consumers.
“For many years all the brands have been coming out with these big prints of the zodiac animals and everything is in red,” he said by phone from France, where he is attending Paris Fashion Week. “It’s not ‘wrong’, but I feel like it’s not very contemporary anymore. I don’t know anyone, myself included, that I’ve seen buy an animal zodiac (luxury item) for a year.
Promotional shot from Prada’s modest Lunar New Year campaign, “Memories of Beauty”. Credit: Prada
“Other than designs that are a little more humorous or funny, if you just put a really obvious animal print on things, that seems like lazy marketing these days,” he added.
The Bottega Veneta campaign is focused on the theme of returning home. The train, painted in the green markings of the Italian label, will travel through China with the message “on the roads that lead home, happy New Year”. Credit: Bottega Veneta
Relatively timeless designs not only have a better chance of surviving the annual fashion cycle, Qiu said, they also demonstrate a better understanding of what today’s luxury buyers are looking for.
“Tradition is still important, but how do we look at it in a modern way?”
Image above: Campaign image for Gucci’s Year of the Rabbit capsule collection.