Lanvin in China or Chinese Lanvin?
On October 18, French couture house Lanvin held a show at the famous traditional Chinese Yu Gardens (豫园) in Shanghai. Many celebrities and KOLs were invited to the show, including top celebrities Zhang Ziyi (章子怡), She Shiman (佘诗曼), top fashion KOLs Mr. Bags and Becky Li. It is fair to say that half of the entertainment industry was there.
The show created lots of buzz on social media. Its livestreaming had over 5.4M views and the Weibo topic #跟着LANVIN浪一浪# (have fun with Lanvin) reached over 140M views.
Why were people so interested in the show? A couple reasons:
Is Lanvin Now a Chinese Brand?
Lanvin is not the old Lanvin anymore. It was purchased by a Chinese investment company called Fosun International (复星国际) in 2018.
While we have observed the massive growth of Chinese brands over the past few years, Chinese luxury brands are still lagging behind their international counterparts. The question of whether China can develop a luxury brand is always under discussion and now that Lanvin is owned by a Chinese company, it has become the case study or experiment that everyone is looking at.
At the moment, the brand only has 7 offline stores in China. This is very little when it comes to luxury as, despite the digitally savvy nature of Chinese consumers, the majority of luxury purchases still happen offline.
However, the brand can still stand out if it studies the China market well and caters matching strategies to the market, which is what domestic brands are doing. And offline stores are needed if your brand wants to have more interaction with consumers.
The Setting
This is not the first time for a luxury brand to choose a traditional Chinese landmark as the backdrop for its show. In 2007, Fendi held its show on The Great Wall and in 2019, Valentino held a show at The Summer Palace (颐和园) in Beijing.
What’s different is that Yu Gardens has never held a show like this before, but because 100k square meters of Yu Gardens is owned by Fosun, Lanvin had the exclusive opportunity to host its show here.
Initial Feedback
On Weibo, in the comment area of KOLs’ posts, people are saying that the show is really good and it did a great job of combining Chinese culture with high-end fashion. When talking about Chinese culture, they are referring to the event location: Yu Gardens, and not to the clothing.
On top fashion KOL Ximendasao’s (西门大嫂) Weibo, to have more interaction with followers, she was giving away a Lanvin sweater. Many followers are saying the sweater is so cute and must look good when putting it on, and they want themselves to be the lucky person to get it. A celebrity Zeng Keni (曾可妮), who participated a popular TV show Youth With You 2 (青春有你) modeled in the show and many people are leaving comments saying her outfit mingles the Chinese elements and the French feeling so well.
Our Thoughts:
The show successfully drew a lot of attention for Lanvin and Chinese consumers got a more detailed image of the brand. Though the brand was purchased by a Chinese company, the outfits were designed and created in France and shipped to China. The French team often woke up at 3am to discuss the show with the Chinese team.
In most consumers’ minds, Lanvin is still a French brand. But it seems that the brand is adding more Chinese elements to its design so this may change over time.
Read more: 深度｜Lanvin在中国，还是中国的Lanvin？
