Luxury Redraws the Map: The Challenge of Glocal Culture
On the Hereford Mappa Mundi, drawn around 1300, the centre of the world is Jerusalem. Everything else is arranged around it, by distance and by importance. For almost a decade, the luxury map, too, had an undisputed centre: China. The slowdown in that market, on which the sector had perhaps become overly dependent, has forced a redrawing of that ‘cartographic’ model.
At the panel ‘Markets: a look at the global dynamics shaping the future of luxury’ at MICAM Next, Emanuela Prandelli, LVMH Professor of Fashion and Luxury Management at Bocconi University, drew some conclusions from that shift. Looking for ‘the next China’ is of little use: several emerging markets matter for what they buy and, increasingly, for the influence they exert on luxury. India also matters for its cultural weight. The Middle East, where many brands have tried to recoup the volumes lost in Asia, is going through a difficult phase and remains a composite region that calls for different adaptations from one area to the next. Africa could become a source of trends, artisanal know-how and new designers.
The condition for continuing to lead, or hoping to, according to Prandelli, is to avoid exporting the Western approach to the consumer. ‘The challenge today is to understand which brand has the deepest grasp of local culture,’ she observed, describing it as a delicate step to take in an ever-widening geography.
The same principle applies to shops. Direct sales remain necessary for those who want full control of image and experience, what the professor calls the ‘ceremony of sale’. But the grammar of the flagship is changing. In the past, luxury pursued absolute consistency: the same formats, the same products in the same windows on the same days. Today, for a flagship to become a must-visit stop for travellers, the opposite is needed: contextualising it, giving it a local flavour, sometimes with collections available only there. This is the glocal approach, which leads to the theatricalisation of the store. For a sector that grew up on the reassuring repetition of its own model, the idea sounds almost like heresy. And yet it is difference itself that justifies the (shopping) trip.
Major groups, from Loro Piana to Fendi, from Bulgari to Dior, are investing in formats that are increasingly close to retailtainment.
Beyond the web, a potentially global point of access, Prandelli points to the role of multi-brand stores conceived as places for scouting: spaces in which to discover what is about to become relevant before it becomes popular. Curation thus returns as a strategic function of distribution.
Medieval maps placed at the centre whatever was considered most important. The luxury map will have to place at its centre what it knows best: the product.
Next week we will continue our look at the evolution of markets, luxury in particular, with a talk by Sojean Son, Global Strategy and Brand Executive at LVMH.