More and more luxury brands are choosing to meet Chinese consumers in the form of exhibitions.
In the second half of 2021, Dior's "Dior and Art" exhibition landed in Shenzhen and Shanghai, Prada presented the art exhibition "The Moon Wrapped in Kraft Paper" in Shanghai Rongzhai, and CHANEL participated in the launch of the "Video Curator Award". Since 24 December, French fine jewellery brand Van Cleef & Arpels has launched a "Moving, Tangible, Art Narrative" fine jewellery art exhibition in Shenzhen to showcase its selected classic collections and documents to the public.
"Chinese consumers are very mature, especially in the fashion sector and the jewelry sector, they are becoming more and more mature." Nicolas Luchsinger, President of Van Cleef & Arpels Asia Pacific, shared his observations on the Chinese market with YIMagazine. In the interview, he also talked about the connection between art and luxury, the transformation of offline stores of luxury brands, and china's young luxury consumers.
Caption: Nicolas Luchsinger has held the position of President of Van Cleef & Arpels Asia Pacific since 2018. Van Cleef & Arpels was born in Paris, France in 1906 and has since become a global fine jewellery watch brand.
Yi=YiMagazine
L=Nicolas Luchsinger
Yi: Van Cleef & Arpels has held many retrospectives of the best collections on different themes around the world, why did it choose to talk to consumers through the form of exhibitions?
L: The exhibition gives us the opportunity to communicate with Chinese consumers in another "language". Of course, the Chinese consumers I'm talking about here are just examples. Exhibitions as a form can better convey information to the public in general, such as conveying brand image, attracting more potential customers through exhibitions, etc., but these are not our primary goals. The main purpose of the exhibition is to give the public a better understanding of van Cleef & Arpels' history and craftsmanship, and at the same time, as you said, we have different themes and different ways to present different contents.
Picture note: "Moving and tangible, art narrating a hundred years" Van Cleef & Arpels Fine Jewelry Art Exhibition, the public free admission.
Caption: This yacht model butler bell is highly reminiscent of the "Varuna of New York" yacht, can be displayed on the table and attached to the electric bell, its design is hidden on the yacht's chimney, used to call the butler.
Photo note: Ballerina ballerina brooch.
Illustration: The collections and historical archives in this exhibition show Van Cleef & Arpels' imagination of different dance genres such as French Cancan, Fox-trot and Thai folk dance.
Yi: Not only Van Cleef & Arpels, from Prada's exhibition at Rongzhai in Shanghai to Louis Vuitton's exhibition "Flying, Sailing, Traveling", more and more luxury brands regard China as an important place for cultural and artistic exchanges, and continue to attract high-quality Chinese consumers in the form of exhibitions. Does this reflect the collective shift in the logic of luxury brands operating in the Chinese market?
L: That's an interesting question, and I'd like to answer it in two parts. First of all, luxury brands do increasingly tell their history and craftsmanship in the form of exhibitions, which is a good model, like Louis Vuitton you just mentioned, and the various brands under its umbrella, as well as Dior and so on. Louis Vuitton's exhibitions began in Paris, then to the United States, and then to China. Dior, too, started in Paris and is now in New York, both touring the world.
But for many luxury brands, the Chinese market is extremely important, so when there is a large art exhibition, the average luxury brand will hold one or two stops in China, so that Chinese consumers can also have the opportunity to feel the charm of the brand. The same is true for Van Cleef & Arpels. Our exhibition is not specifically curated for the Chinese market, Shenzhen is only one of the stops of the global touring exhibition, and it will develop into a global touring exhibition in the future.
Yi: Will there be different strategies and practices for luxury brands to hold exhibitions, to hold exhibitions in mature markets such as Europe and the United States, and to hold exhibitions in new rich markets such as China?
L: Mature markets, such as the European and American markets you mentioned, are themselves more aware of Van Cleef & Arpels than China. So for the Chinese market, we may need to explain consumers more deeply and provide them with richer information, but the overall strategy will not change depending on the market of different countries.
Interestingly, of course, I'm not talking about this exhibition now, because it's not the case, and in some of the past exhibitions in China, we will deliberately incorporate history and local style, such as selecting some jewelry works that are influenced by Asian styles. In the 1930s, Europe set off a wave of cultural liberation movements, which had a great impact on different cities, including Shanghai, which was very representative and artistic. Shanghai is still a model of an art city, such as the Bund and the buildings around the Bund, where many shops were built in the 1930s and 1940s and are now very well preserved. Overall, the influence of the 1930s was great, and this can also be seen in jewelry design.
Yi: You have a wealth of experience in store management, looking back at history, how has the location and scale of Van Cleef & Arpels offline stores changed?
L: That's an interesting question. Van Cleef & Arpels has a tradition that we will include all the stores that have been opened in history, and you can see the change in the style of the store. From the development process of Van Cleef & Arpels, it can be seen that the location and design of our offline stores are constantly changing, and now everyone can shop online, but they did not before. Therefore, the store layout of luxury goods, or the store layout of Van Cleef & Arpels, is actually to follow the customer and make the customer's shopping process convenient enough.
Many cities used to have Van Cleef & Arpels stores, but then we closed them. In the past, rich people might have traveled somewhere, or used to be rich there, but now things have changed. The most typical example is South Africa, and buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, which was very rich between World War I and World War II, but after World War II, the economy plummeted, and we closed our local stores. Then we shifted our market focus to France, where we opened a lot of brick-and-mortar stores in major residential areas of France, as well as Cannes, the Riviera, and Les Deux-Villes in Normandy, in northern France, where we also have stores. Now, Cannes and Monaco still have our stores, because many aristocratic celebrities come here on holidays, and americans, Europeans and Asians can hardly resist the charm of the South of France. But Ledwell was not as attractive as before, so we closed the store over there as well.
Of course, each city itself is evolving. At a certain time, the city center may be in this place, and there will be a lot of luxury stores, but it may change in the city center after a few years, and these stores will naturally move with it. The essence of the store is to follow the customer. It's a similar situation in China, where we opened a flagship store on Huaihai Road in Shanghai about 10 years ago, and then we closed that store and moved to Plaza 66 because we think plaza 66 is now a luxury business district.
The change in store size is also an interesting question. Luxury brands are inseparable from the "communication" with customers, such as art exhibitions are a way of telling stories. But we also want our customers to be able to tell their stories and history when they enter the store, so our stores are getting bigger and bigger, which is why we opened our flagship store in the first place. For example, we opened a flagship store in the Shanghai International Finance Center, and there is a "1906 Salon" area in that flagship store, which is actually equivalent to a small museum. In the zone, we can tell our clients the story of the brand, display works from the Van Cleef & Arpels archives and introduce Van Cleef & Arpels' collection of museums. There is a similar zone in Beijing Guomao. In Chengdu, we are preparing to move our existing stores to a new location. The current store is beautiful, but the area is not large enough to tell a story, so we are ready to choose a larger store in other parts of Chengdu so that we can make a special area.
Photo note: Van Cleef & Arpels' flagship store in Beijing World Mall has a "1906 Salon" section.
Yi: Luxury goods are no longer just the object of consumer frenzy, but also begin to carry more diversified values. In your opinion, has the definition of fine jewelry been rewritten? What changes could its connotation be made in the future?
L: I agree with that. Everyone now has more and more thinking about the concept of consumption: how many handbags you need, a few pairs of high heels, how to dispose of them after you have used them, etc.
For jewelry, you can also see in our art exhibition that jewelry is eternal, and jewelry itself is a decorative work of art, you can wear it all the time, or collect it, or even pass it on to the next generation. A fine jewelry you buy today will become an antique in the future, and we hope it will always show its high quality. Jewelry itself is also an art. We have a workshop in Place Vendôme in Paris where you can see how master craftsmen make every piece of jewelry with excellence. Our mission is to keep this workshop running and provide the best creative environment for craftsmen. In fact, in our exhibition, there are some jewelry collections that can no longer be manufactured today, and the jewelry skills of that time have been lost. So we don't want something like that to happen again, we want the craft to be passed on forever.
Yi: Taking China's luxury jewelry consumer market as an example, such as consumer portraits, consumption habits, etc., what are the unique features of the Chinese market compared with other markets in the Asia-Pacific region?
L: The Chinese market is a delicate market, which is why we are hosting this art exhibition. Chinese consumers are very mature, especially in the fashion and jewelry sectors, they are becoming more and more mature. And Chinese consumers are very young, which is very different from consumers in other markets. Young Chinese consumers have a very clear understanding of luxury goods, luxury culture and craftsmanship, which is also very different from consumers in other markets, especially compared to consumers in Europe and the United States.
Yi: What do you think of young Chinese luxury consumers? Do you have any special impressions of them?
L: The way young Chinese consumers approach the luxury sector is very different. I feel like they started learning about luxury at a very young age, the second stage was exposure to fine jewelry, and then the third stage was to learn about the brand's craftsmanship. And these stages are transitioning very quickly, whether it is young consumers living in first-tier or second-tier cities.
Yi: Finally, let's go back to this exhibition in Shenzhen. Can you elaborate on the curatorial ideas of this exhibition and the core content you want to convey?
L: This exhibition is our first in the world and the first event of Van Cleef & Arpels in Shenzhen. We wanted to use these precious jewellery collections to showcase the "artistic rhythm" that the brand has always pursued, which is the first attempt at Van Cleef & Arpels.
When we talk about the words "rhythm" and "dynamic", the first thing that comes to mind may be "travel", so this exhibition incorporates a lot of travel-related elements to interpret the "rhythm" of travel through jewelry collections, such as a sailboat on the waves, or a car dotted on a jewelry powder box. The second is the "agility" in nature, such as the bloom of a flower, the wind blowing in nature, and the "agility" of birds, such as birds with slender feathers soaring and spreading their wings. Van Cleef & Arpels' signature ballerina brooch is also a kind of "rhythm", presenting the "rhythmic" beauty of the dancer's dancing moment through jewelry. The exhibition will also present the "rhythm" of haute couture, such as the bow, when you wear it on your hair, or pin it to clothes and skirts, as people move, the bow will also follow the rhythm of the body to have its own movement, and this rhythm can also be presented on jewelry. The last kind of "rhythm" is more abstract, in many 1970s jewelry designs, you can see this abstract artistic conception of the "smart" presentation, when people wear jewelry in a more casual and casual way, so you will see some jewelry interpreting the "power of flowers", and some works are influenced by Asian art styles.