Around 2,000 guests joined Chanel ambassadors G Dragon, Penelope Cruz, Angèle and more in Hong Kong on Tuesday for the replica runway show of the house’s cruise 2025 collection, which was first unveiled in Marseille in May.
The collection was the last for its former creative director Virginie Viard, who suddenly departed the house in June. Despite ongoing speculation, Chanel has yet to pick a date to reveal its next designer.
The French luxury house’s next three collections, including Métiers d’Art that will be shown in Hangzhou, the January couture, and the Lake Como cruise show, will all be carried out by its in-house team.
With so much suspense around Chanel’s next creative director, Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion and president of Chanel SAS, reiterated his stance on “choosing the best for the job.”
“It’s about working with more than 2 million clients and more than 100,000 top clients in the world, it’s a lot of work and for that we need to have [someone that has] the power, Chanel needs power,” Pavlovsky added. “There are not that many and also brands, they have very good lawyers.”
As for the future of the Chinese luxury market, which is facing a prolonged slowdown, one that could be exacerbated by the Donald Trump presidency, Pavlovsky is taking a long view on the luxury business. “A normal crisis” is how he characterized the current downturn.
“Perhaps what is not normal, if I may say, is to see what happened at China in the past 10 years, we’ve had incredible double-digit growth every year, which means we have done a good job,” Pavlovsky said. “We feel that this economic downturn has an impact, not directly, but has an impact on our clients, their purchasing power is not the same, but that’s OK. We’ve seen it happen many times before. What is important is that as a brand, we continue to create incredible moments, to make people dream,” he added.
For Pavlovsky, engaging with the next generation of creators is a key reason for hosting the show in the Asian hub.
“I would love to see and to talk about Hong Kong before the Design Institute and after the Design Institute,” Pavlovsky said of the choice of the show location, the Hong Kong Design Institute building. “For Chanel, we want to give a very strong sign about how important Hong Kong is.”
With 10 fashion boutiques, Hong Kong is one of the regional markets with the highest density of Chanel stores. The company first entered the market in 1979 with a store at the upscale Peninsula hotel.
“We don’t have that many cities in the world where we have 10 boutiques except Paris. We don’t have another equivalent, so that shows how important the relationship with Hong Kong and Hong Kong’s client is,” Pavlovsky said.
Last year Chanel quietly signed one of the biggest leases since the COVID-19 pandemic in Causeway Bay.
The two-story, 8,600-square-foot storefront, which is currently home to “The Magical House of Chanel,” a beauty pop-up, underpins the brand’s confidence in the Hong Kong market.
Based on a market visit conducted by Bernstein during the October Golden Week holiday, overall luxury traffic improved 40 percent in Hong Kong compared to the Labor Day holiday in May, with top luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci and Hermès taking the lead.
“Hong Kong became incrementally more attractive as the renminbi strengthening against the Hong Kong dollar but weakening against the yen,” the report said.
On Tuesday evening, the runway show unfolded within the imposing corridors on the seventh and eighth floors of Hong Kong Design Institute.
A collection filled with coastal ease, key looks included dresses adorned with sea creature motifs, swimsuits elegantly tied with Chanel bows, and classic tweed jackets that had inserted diving hoods.
Thai model and actress Aokbab seen on the runway of Chanel’s replica cruise 2025 collection.
The cruise 2025 collection immediately launched in Hong Kong stores a day after the show, followed by a gradual global release. “We’ll start to change the mood of the boutique tonight,” Pavlovsky added.
After the show guests were shuttled to a party at the Shaw Studios near by. A film production company founded in the 1930s, the legendary studio played a crucial role in cementing Hong Kong’s status as the Hollywood of the East. Back in 2006, the venue hosted Chanel’s first Hong Kong runway show, which was a replica of Karl Lagerfeld‘s 2006 haute couture collection.
The post-show performance was headlined by Angèle and Sébastien Tellier, the Marseille-based dance company (La)Horde, Nathalie Hsu, a local actress and friend of the house, singer Kalai and DJ Yeti Out.
Angèle and Sébastien Tellier performing on stage.
Courtesy
In tandem with the show, Chanel set up a series of talks that showcased its strong ties with the local creative scene, in particular the local film industry. On Monday, the company hosted a series of talks around Hong Kong cinema at Shaw Studios. Guests included the legendary film editor William Chang, French director Audrey Diwan, Hong Kong actor Angela Yuen and Hong Kong director Norris Wong.
The next morning, a series of talks, or “Chanel Student Day,” was unveiled at HKDI. The morning panels featured Pavlovsky, Cruz, Margaret Zhang and more.