According to Timothy Schepis, founder & director of Japanese media source Tokyo Fashion Daily
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TOKYO, Mature and Resilient in a Time of Crisis
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Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.
PARIS – Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador Dalí created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamo’s shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.
In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, a book marking the foundation’s 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes “a connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.”
The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemparain building in Paris
According to Timothy Schepis, founder & director of Japanese media source Tokyo Fashion Daily
The famed neon of Shinjuku, Tokyo
According to Timothy Schepis, founder & director of Japanese media source Tokyo Fashion Daily…
Japan entered 2011 with high optimism. Even though consumers were less conspicuous and aspirational in their shopping, they began spending again. Tokyo luxury retailers were coming off of strong December same-store-sales and new lifestyle brands Reed Krakoff and Michael Kors entered the Japan luxury market, with flagship boutiques in Tokyo. Japan Fashion Week was increasing in size and popularity and was becoming a must-attend event for foreign buyers and press.
As the economy was improving and consumer spending on luxury goods with it, the unthinkable happened – a natural disaster of untold destruction. Although the earthquake and ensuing tsunami in the northern part of Japan did not affect the infrastructure of Tokyo, it did affect the consumer psyche; luxury brands temporarily closed their doors, relocated their Tokyo headquarters to Osaka and both Japanese and foreigners left for safer ground.
Ten days later something wonderful happened: retailers opened their doors, Tokyoites returned, people started shopping again and most of the luxury-brand CEOs I have spoken to since the quake are optimistic. Not only is Tokyo a mature luxury market, it is also resilient – as are the people who live here.
Notes from Luxury Society
Japan has long served as a priority market for luxury, whilst brands may be increasingly focused on India and China, a significant number of big-name manufacturer’s still rely on Japan for an average of 13% of total profit. Even as recently as 2010, Japanese consumers at home and abroad accounted for 24% of all luxury goods sales, reported the New York Times.
Speaking recently at the LVMH annual general meeting, CEO Bernard Arnault expressed his optimism for Japan in the mid-term, suggesting that whilst Louis Vuitton Tokyo stores “are less full than usual" he has "confidence in the capacity of the Japanese to face this situation and perhaps even come back stronger.”
