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It was a spectacle befitting Pharrell Williams’s tenure at Louis Vuitton to date.
On Thursday night, around 1,200 guests attended the brand’s surf-themed pre-fall menswear show in Hong Kong, held on the Avenue of Stars in the Victoria Harbour waterfront. Celebrities from Hong Kong and all around Asia — including Hong Kong actors Chow Yun-fat and Karena Lam, K-pop star and house ambassador Felix of Stray Kids, Taiwanese actors Austin Lin and Jasper Liu, Dylan Wang from China and Japanese actor Sho Hirano — sat front row, as well as Bernard Arnault’s wife Hélène Mercier Arnault.
There was sand on the ground, ukulele players, a cast that included Hawaiian surfers, all while overhead, drones formed shapes in the sky. Excitement reached its peak at the finale when Williams walked the runway with the models.
The show was a declaration of Hong Kong’s — and Asia’s — importance to the brand. “The Hong Kong skyline is in everyone’s head, and having the chance to block the Avenue of Stars, which normally has two million people passing through every day, for two days is not bad,” says Louis Vuitton chairman and CEO Pietro Beccari, speaking to Vogue Business ahead of the show. He called the choice to come to Hong Kong “a decision from the heart”.
Luxury in Hong Kong is seeing a rebound since the reopening of its borders with mainland China in February 2023. The city’s geographical positioning offers an advantage. Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul and Bangkok are all less than a four-hour flight away. “Hong Kong is the belly button of Asia,” the executive points out.
Staging such a show in the current economic climate, when brands are more likely to curb investments, is bold. “As usual, we accelerate on the bends,” says Beccari. The executive, who was appointed in January, is known for making bold moves: while CEO at Dior, he staged physical shows during the pandemic, including one in 2022 in front of the pyramids in Egypt, built top-tier retail stores and experiences, and raised the bar for flagship stores across the luxury industry with the reopening of the Dior historical flagship. A destination show like this one is worth the investment, according to Beccari. “Louis Vuitton being the brand of travel, it’s necessary to go and meet different cultures.”
The Hong Kong show marked Williams’s second for the house. He presented his first collection, for Spring/Summer 2024, with a bang on the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris (slated to hit stores on 4 January). This Friday, the house is opening pop-up stores in the US and China where clients are able to pre-order the collection.
Williams, together with Beccari, was a driving force behind the decision to show in Hong Kong. “Think about the economic force that China has always been. And when you zoom into it, Hong Kong is a very special place,” Williams told Luke Leitch during a preview of the release. “So for me, it’s very important to be here, with the people here. Sure, they have a great impact on our business, but beyond that I’m also talking about the energy here; the culture, the art.”
After the show, Williams, who just opened accounts on Chinese social media platforms Red and Douyin, is heading to Mainland China to meet clients, press and influencers in Shanghai, Chengdu and Beijing. While Hong Kong is gradually recovering from the pandemic lockdowns, growth in Mainland China is slowing. According to HSBC estimates, luxury sales there are expected to grow 5 per cent in 2024, a sharp deceleration compared with 2023’s projected 18 per cent.
“China is still doing well for us,” Beccari says. “Going from A to B is never a straight line. We know that we’ll get to B. We have a strategy. We adapt to the conditions.” Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, LVMH CFO Jean-Jacques Guiony noted that the comparison base in Asia will be easier than in Q3. “Louis Vuitton is not [just looking at] the next quarter [but at the next decades],” Beccari says.
Louis Vuitton is the world’s largest luxury brand, generating sales of €20.62 billion in 2022, according to estimates from HSBC and representing around 26 per cent of total LVMH revenues. But the house is not immune to the wider industry’s growth normalisation. In the third quarter of 2023, sales of LVMH’s fashion and leather goods division rose 9 per cent.
How far can the mega-brand go? The house has already expanded to hospitality with restaurants, beach clubs and an airport lounge and, according to sources, plans to open a hotel on Avenue des Champs-Élysées. “We can go into surprising territories,” says Beccari. “Louis Vuitton is a brand that goes beyond the product. It’s a cultural system — now, with Pharrell, even more [so]. Nicolas [Ghesquière] (who recently renewed his contract at Louis Vuitton for five years) has left his mark on the fashion culture over the last 10 years. The growth of Louis Vuitton doesn’t have a limit.”
Asked if Williams already has had a ‘halo effect’ on the brand before his collections even hit stores, Beccari says: “I think so. There are a lot of people entering the stores and asking for Pharrell’s products; there is a lot of anticipation, not only in the US. I don’t have numbers but my feeling is yes.”
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