New Hermès Paris Flagship “A Way Station On A New Silk Road”

http://www.jingdaily.com/en/luxury/new-hermes-paris-flagship-a-way-station-on-a-new-silk-road/

This week, Suzy Menkes of the New York Times takes a look at the new, super-sized Hermès flagship in Paris, a temple to international commerce she describes as “a way station on a new Silk Road, designed as a destination for shopping tourists, who increasingly come from China.” From the article:

Patrick Thomas, president and chief executive of Hermès, says that the new project at 17 Rue de Sèvres is intended to draw local customers who might not make it to the landmark store on the other bank of the Seine. But the executive also says that visitors from Hong Kong, Macao, South Korea and Taiwan, as well as from China, already make up 4 to 5 percent of Paris shoppers — and account for 17 percent of the company’s fast-growing sales figures. There are 70 pan-Asia stores (excluding the 50 in Japan) — double the 35 shops across France.

The lure of lavish flagships, in Paris as in elsewhere, to Asian luxury consumers hasn’t faded over the past 30 years, even as Japanese tourist-shoppers have been supplanted by South Korean, then Taiwanese, and now mainland Chinese. In their 2006 book The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia’s Love Affair With Luxury — critical reading for anyone interested in the Asian luxury market — Paul Husband and Radha Chadha write,

[In Japan,] the mega-flagship trend was started by the $138 million La Maison Hermès in 2001 — a stunning 11-story glass brick store in Ginza, Tokyo’s primary shopping district — and more flagships have been popping up ever since like popcorn in a microwave. The bar was set so high that soon everyone was calling on top architects, including Japan’s finest, to create spectacular monuments that embodied the spirit of their brands. Not far from Hermes’ building is Chanel’s dazzler on Chuo Dori: Designed by American architect Peter Marino, its glass facade projects Chanel’s signature tweed pattern. Louis Vuitton held a design competition and winner Jun Aoki created the “randomly stacked trunks” building on Omotesando.

 

In building its newest Parisian “luxury cathedral,” in the words of Husband and Chadha, Hermès recognizes that the situation is quite different for consumers in places like China than it was for the previous generation of Asian tourist-shoppers from Japan or South Korea. In China, though Hermès boasts a number of boutiques in 16 cities, it currently lacks a mega-flagship on the level of that found in Ginza. However, much of this is likely due to a keen understanding of the idiosyncrasies of the mainland China market, more than anything else.

Hermès knows two important things about the China market as it stands today: first, that wealthy Chinese luxury consumers would gain greater prestige back home by shopping at the new Paris flagship than they would at an equally lavish Shanghai flagship, and second, that the relatively lower price in Paris (or even Hong Kong, for that matter) due to China’s high luxury tax, means that fewer potential buyers — at least in wealthy top-tier Chinese cities — will shop locally. As a result, it would take far longer for Hermès to see a return on investment from a multi-million-dollar flagship in Shanghai or Beijing than it would in Paris, Tokyo, or possibly even New York.

However, it would be foolish to think that Hermès, by focusing on smaller boutiques and strictly limiting its China expansion, is missing opportunities. Preserving its exclusivity by avoiding the ubiquity of brands like Louis Vuitton is a company trademark, and with the recent launch of Shang Xia — the homegrown Chinese brand it supports — Hermès is showing a deeper interest in Chinese design and culture than other imported brands, some of which fall back on Orientalist motifs that have, at times, left Chinese consumers cold.

So, in essence, if Hermès doesn’t have to build a China flagship that rivals Louis Vuitton’s in Shanghai or Burberry’s in Beijing right now, why should it rush?

Hermès’ China Brand Shang Xia To Launch Next Week: Watch For Jing Daily’s Exclusive Coverage

Since word first broke that Hermès was planning a “Created in China” standalone luxury brand focused on the Chinese market last winter, Shang Xia, Jing Daily has kept a close eye on the brand’s development. Though details have been scarce, we’ve already established that the first Shang Xia boutique will open in Shanghai with a ribbon-cutting ceremony planned for September 16. Next week, be sure to check out Jing Daily’s exclusive coverage of the launch event, coming right after the event ends.

Until then, here is our previous coverage of Shang Xia, the first-ever Made in China luxury brand supported by a major global luxury house:

5 Things We Know About Hèrmes’ New China Brand, Shang Xia
While Hèrmes is behind Shang Xia, the brand itself was started from scratch with the Chinese market fully in mind. Headed by creative director Jiang Qionger, everything from the design to the materials, manufacture, marketing and management will be local. As Florian Craen, Hermès managing director in north Asia, recently told the FT, Shang Xia truly is its own brand: “It is a Chinese brand, developed in China with the Chinese team, based on Chinese craftsmanship and broadly made in China. We don’t want any confusion.”
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Will We Soon See “Real Luxury Localization” In China?
We often look at luxury brand localization in China, a trend that has become more noticeable as ”post-80s” consumers (those born in the post-economic-reform period of the 1980s and more likely than their parents to spend rather than save) have become a force to be reckoned with. With China projected to have 65 million potential luxury consumers by 2020 and set to become the world’s largest single luxury market by 2015, luxury brands know they can’t afford to ignore the demands of Chinese luxury shoppers, who are younger and less brand-loyal than their counterparts in Japan or developed Western countries.
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Hermès To Back New Brand, Shang Xia, In China: Will It Turn Off Chinese Luxury Buyers?
Women’s Wear Daily reported last week that French luxury house Hermes plans to support the launch of a new luxury handbag brand, Shang Xia, in China this coming spring. According to reports confirmed by French newspaper La Tribune, Hermes’ involvement in the launch of Shang Xia wil mark the first time Hermes has built a brand from the ground up, and the company’s products will be designed, manufactured and sold entirely in China.

All of this seems to make sense, since China is now the world’s second-largest luxury market and the world’s most populous country. But is this concept doomed to fail?

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Don’t Blame the Iceberg for the Lack of Warmth

By GUY TREBAY
THE berg was not, as it appeared, a solid block of ice. It was many, a total of 240 tons of “snice,” or snow-ice, purportedly hacked from a glacier in Sweden, hauled to France in 15 tractor-trailers and installed in a specially built waterproof box at the Grand Palais.

There 35 artisans spent days sculpturing the 28-foot mountain of frozen water into an apparition that made the Chanel show on Tuesday one of the more unforgettable pieces of theater, fashion or otherwise, that most in the audience were likely to see. It was a National Geographic moment, a stunt of the sort only a designer like Karl Lagerfeld could come up with, or afford, thanks to the deep corporate pockets of Chanel.

But there was also a Woody Allen moment, and it occurred after the last of the models, clad in fake fur Wookie-wear, had sloshed through the puddles and offstage, and a small group of Mr. Lagerfeld’s industry friends tried to see and congratulate him.

For reasons that were not altogether clear but may have had something to do with pooled water and electrical cables lying about, the security guards formed a human wall blocking the Vogue editors Tonne Goodman and Grace Coddington; the Vanity Fair correspondent Ingrid Sischy; Lady Amanda Harlech; Babeth Djian, the editor of Numéro; and Jonathan Newhouse, the chairman of Condé Nast International, from going backstage.

BlackBerrys were fired up. Frantic calls were dialed. Well-shod hooves were stamped. Ms. Sischy upbraided the security force, assuring them that Mr. Lagerfeld would be both furious and “triste” if prevented from seeing his adoring fans. But the guards would not be budged. Passage backstage was impossible!

Then, in an abrupt reversal familiar to anyone who has ever encountered French bureaucracy, they changed their minds. The guards moved away, and the small crowd surged en masse to where Mr. Lagerfeld posed beside his ice sculpture surrounded on three sides by television crews. Still separated from her friend and idol, Ms. Sischy called out plaintively.

“Karl, Karl, Karl,” she trilled, and for a moment one was not in Paris at all but on a floe in the Arctic Ocean, on a fragment of ice snapped off the glacial shelf. “Karl, Karl,” Ms. Sischy called, her cry like that of a baby seal.

The Hermès scarf: Hip to be square

(The Guardian)

By Laura Tennant

Desired by many and beloved by elegant celebrities, the Hermès scarf is an iconic piece of fashion history. But how the deuce are you meant to tie it?

La Femme Au Carré, Bali Barret, 2005.

Many designers strive to close the gap between fashion and art, but few succeed. With the creation of its famous scarf in 1937, the House of Hermès invented wearable art at one brilliantly simple stroke. Develop the finest screen-printing techniques possible, cultivate a stable of the most talented graphic designers and textile artists, unleash a riot of creativity and colour laced with motifs drawn from history, mythology, flora, fauna, war, peace, global culture and (but of course) the realm of the horse, et voilà! You have the most desirable, iconic and grown-up 36 square inches of silk in fashion. All this can be yours, by the way, for £228 to around £500.

The carré has been beloved by elegant celebrity: Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Onassis, Grace Kelly and Catherine Deneuve were collectors, and in the 50s the Queen wore one on a postage stamp (1972’s Regina returned the favour with a floral homage). And no feeling person could browse the ravishing pages of The Hermès Scarf: History And Mystique (Thames & Hudson, £60) without wanting one.

But how the deuce does one tie the thing? While the French might fashion it effortlessly into a jaunty neckerchief (cf Romy Schneider), British women of a certain class are more likely to fasten it securely under the chin in preparation for challenging outdoor activity (cf Her Maj). At the pop-up Hermès store in Liberty last month, fashionistas queued up to learn the correct (chic not mumsy) way to do it. But you may decide simply to refer to 2005’s meta-scarf, La Femme au Carré (previous page). It is all beautifully French and philosophical, but more to the point it demonstrates la méthode. Add a little black dress, collarbones to die for, a slash of red lipstick and, mama, you will own that Hermès.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/21/hermes-scarf-fashion-icon