Judge the era more accurately.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “LADYMAX” (ID: lmfashionnews), author Drizzie.
At the beginning of people’s dream of globalization, the clash of civilizations has already existed as a sweet price. Today, precisely in the throes of conflict, maintaining a dialogue among civilizations has become an original intention that should not be forgotten.
Such themes of the grand era are projected on every individual and industry, and affect every major or minor decision. The fashion industry in crisis is also thinking about its own way out under the theme of the times.
At the beginning of 2018, French luxury brand Louis Vuitton announced Virgil Abloh as the artistic director of menswear. He became the first African-American creative director of the brand and even the LVMH group. This appointment, which was slightly radical at the time, is now two years later—a period when the racial equality movement is in full swing and the integration of luxury goods and streetwear—has become more relevant.
For two years, Virgil Abloh made bold experiments in the Louis Vuitton menswear trial field. In addition to regular fashion shows, Virgil Abloh has opened pop-up shops and exhibitions around the world, guerillaly laying out chapters about his personal values.
Until after the epidemic, the above quantitative changes turned into qualitative changes. Virgil Abloh said in the latest official declaration, “Spring and summer 2021 will be a turning point for my tenure at Louis Vuitton.” This turning point was concentrated in the 2021 spring and summer men’s show held by Louis Vuitton in Shanghai yesterday.
During the epidemic lockdown, the global fashion industry is thinking about the future of fashion shows. After the epidemic, the first large-scale luxury brand fashion show held in China with live audiences bears the weight of the industry’s cold start, but it is precisely because of this that it can abandon tradition and freely formulate a new industry order in the post-epidemic era.
The answers given by Virgil Abloh and Louis Vuitton are fundamentally a rethinking of time and space.
In terms of time, all the efforts shown in this fashion show reflect the intention to break seasonality. From the perspective of the series itself, the dissolution of the season concept is reflected in the recycling of product materials from the past series, and the launch of cross-creative platform upgrades and reconstruction projects. Virgil Abloh believes that “No season is an old season” (no season is out of date).
Therefore, the 2021 spring and summer menswear collection embodies the upgrade and transformation on four levels, including new ones made of recycled materials.Styles, styles that have appeared in the 2020 autumn and winter series, styles made from recycled materials by the studio during the home isolation period, and new styles upgraded based on existing ideas.
Secondly, although the series is named the spring and summer series, it actually blurs the seasonality. This series called “Drifting Bottle” travels from Paris to Shanghai by container, and then will land in Japan. The content of the fashion show will gradually adapt and evolve according to the culture of each country.
Louis Vuitton 2021 Spring/Summer series shipping map
In yesterday’s show, Louis Vuitton incorporated a lot of Chinese cultural details, including the opening session of the dragon and lion dance, and all Chinese models were used, which brought a rare positive force to the audience who had suppressed it for half a year. .
Such a touring concept not only satisfies the inconvenience of travel during the epidemic, but also echoes the “travel” theme of the Louis Vuitton brand, thus further reflecting the values of diversity and inclusiveness that Virgil Abloh has advocated since taking office.
In terms of space, the upgrade of this fashion show is not only to break the original Parisianism of fashion, and to bring the fashion show to various markets, but more importantly, to open up the boundaries between online and offline thinking. From all levels of operation, Louis Vuitton’s show broke through the traditional dual thinking of online and offline, and used more physical forms and digital innovation to achieve a common goal.
First of all, at the creative level, the brand first screened a short film at the Louis Vuitton Maison de Famille in Asnières on July 9. The short film was shot in the ancestral home of the founder of LouisVuitton in Paris. The cartoon image porter in the film carried Louis Vuitton’s containers onto the ship, and the ship moved down the Seine River and slowly left Paris. There is a group of colorful animated characters on the boat called “Zoooom with friends”.
Virgil Abloh and Louis Vuitton have launched a series of animated images “Zoooom with friends” for the new series
As the ship enters the Shanghai station, these two-dimensional animation images are transformed into real fashion show models, realizing the alternating from two-dimensional animation to three-dimensional images, which is also a seamless transformation from online to offline.
Secondly, in the fashion show form, Louis Vuitton insisted on retaining the physical form of the fashion show, and reiterated the emotional value of the fashion show. Michael Burke, Global President and CEO of Louis Vuitton, said, “I think the fashion show must be held live, there must be audiences, there must be expectations, there must be tension, there must be last-minute expectations (before the fashion show) . If you don’t have these, it’s like some football games without spectators.”
Only when the most basic emotional value is created offline can we have the prerequisites for spreading on emotionally-oriented social media. So on the other hand, Louis Vuitton breaks the inherent class of traditional fashion shows and radiates its influence to China’s social media world as widely as possible by carrying out carpet-like full-platform live broadcasting on the official website, Weibo and Douyin.
Among them, Louis Vuitton officially opened a Douyin account for this big show, and currently has a total of 68,000 fans. Weibo is taken over by GQ, which is good at creating social media topics, to activate the flow of the Weibo live broadcast portal. According to the WeChat public account LADYMAX, as of 11:30 on August 7, the final number of live views of Louis Vuitton on various platforms reached 89.03 million.
From offline to online, from WeChat, Weibo, Douyin to outdoor advertising, Louis Vuitton almost finds To communicate with all kinds of people in 360 degrees without dead ends
It is worth noting that in addition to social media platforms, live broadcasts are also broadcast on outdoor advertising screens. This means that from offline to online, to offline, Louis Vuitton has almost found a 360 A way of communication without dead ends.
In fact, in addition to the online and offline linkage realized by Louis Vuitton during the fashion show, the brand also runs through this logic before and after the show. For example, during the epidemic, the Chinese market of Louis Vuitton still achieved rapid growth. During Valentine’s Day this year, online channel sales doubled compared with the same period last year.
According to the WeChat public account LADYMAX, this is mainly due to the rapid response of the brand and the realization of omni-channel linkage. The sales staff of the brand’s offline stores will remotely share the QR code of the flash applet with the customers, and use online sales to make up for the inevitable drop in offline traffic. More importantly, it is to further complete the connection between online customer data and offline customers.
In addition to the short-term topic value of the fashion show, the fashion show is actually another good opportunity to further optimize the customer relationship management system. Any offline communication method, including postcards sent by e-commerce sales, postcards displayed in all stores, LEDs and outdoor advertisements in all shopping malls include a QR code for social binding, so that the bound audience can receive the live broadcast preview With other subscription notifications, you can also re-watch the details of the fashion show under the leadership of the blogger through the same live link.
These sophisticated digital innovations may be difficult for the audience to detect, but they can significantly enhance the online experience and enable the brand to further establish the brand’s digital assets and customer resources, which will provide more innovative attempts for the brand in the future To improve the user base, it is more direct to drive the brand’s online sales.
The Chinese market is naturally the most suitable experimental field for this series of luxury brand digital innovations.
With China InternetThe younger generation of China who has grown up in the Internet industry has already taken digitalization as a basic condition of life. For this group of young consumers, consumption is social, and vice versa. Therefore, the continuous production of attractive and youthful digital content and the continuous experimentation of emerging social platforms have become the daily work content of luxury brands.
As the first and most successful top luxury brand to enter the Chinese market, Louis Vuitton also took advantage of the trend and gradually established a distinctive image of digital innovation and social interaction in the past few years, such as becoming the first to log in to the shopping sharing community Xiaohong Luxury brand of books.
The increasing digital investment of brands in the Chinese market can bring obvious returns. Especially in this epidemic, the strategic position of digitalization has been fully proved. The Chinese market, which is more digitized and has stronger purchasing power, will also become the most important regional market. According to the forecast of the consulting firm Bain, Chinese consumers will contribute 50% of global luxury goods consumption by 2025.
Digital innovation is so important, so the smartest brands must know that any fashion show of this scale is an opportunity for brands to achieve a digital leap.
Some unexpected factors will also affect the future of the story. Now digitization is not only reflected in the consumer-facing level, but even penetrated into the working methods of brands during the epidemic, making localization and globalization parallel. Affected by the epidemic, the French headquarters personnel were unable to travel to China. Therefore, the Chinese local team took on unprecedented tasks. They needed to independently find a venue based on communication with the headquarters, communicate and design with the Virgil Abloh team, and complete the show production and China. Model casting.
“This is a more modern way of working.” Michael Burke said. In practice, the innovation and execution power of the Chinese team has upgraded the management of luxury goods companies in the era of globalization and the post-epidemic era. For brands like Louis Vuitton that have sufficient budgets and strong global execution capabilities, both in concept and operation, they have set a benchmark for the industry. This is a role model that giants should have in the post-epidemic era and another brand operation. Reconstruction of order at different levels.
What exactly is the new order established by Louis Vuitton’s show? Virgil Abloh’s core values have been able to explain the problem-diversity, tolerance, and unity.
Two years ago, when LVMH boss Bernard Arnault was tired of the definition of “luxury”, he placed his bet on Virgil Abloh. After Virgil Abloh took office as the first African-American creative director, he would inevitably violate some conservative consumer positions. But Bernard Arnault chose to take the risk. He bet on the deep-rooted white centrism in Europe and believed that multiculturalism and racial tolerance would be irreversible.The general trend. And now you have to admit that LVMH was right. Successful businessmen will always keep the most sensitive sense of market trends.
To this emerging fashion show, Virgil Abloh directly introduced the giant balloon installation in the shape of the earth into the show, which also made the brand’s proposition clearer.
It is no longer just a pure fashion show, but a process of cultural exchanges and collisions between the brand and different countries, including the communication within the regional market and between the global regions, which is a combination of internal and external cycles Double loop. In the possible reverse globalization environment, forward-looking luxury brands will try to find more suitable communication and operation methods in operation, but still believe in the vision of globalization in terms of values.
Now, Louis Vuitton is the Louis Vuitton of France, Louis Vuitton of China, and Louis Vuitton of the world. The more turbulent and fragmented the period, the more Louis Vuitton needs to accurately judge the era.