While analysts are projecting a slowdown in demand for luxury goods, Affluent Insights study looked at the Chinese consumers purchasing behaviour and found out that they have remained bullish overall about their own spending in 2019.
How Affluent Chinese Consumers are Looking to Spend Their Money
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
While analysts are projecting a slowdown in demand for luxury goods, Affluent Insights study looked at the Chinese consumers purchasing behaviour and found out that they have remained bullish overall about their own spending in 2019.
The new year in China began with ominous notes being sounded about the future of its luxury sector. A number of analysts issued gloomy projections of a slowdown in demand for luxury goods, which have already impacted share prices for a number of luxury houses.
But are these worries reflected in Chinese luxury goods buyers’ own thinking? Are luxury consumers themselves looking to relax their wallets?
In Agility Research & Strategy’s 2019 Affluent Insights study, fielded in November of 2018, we asked over 1,000 affluent Chinese consumers (from households earning at least 400,000 RMB or 59,000 USD a year), including over 300 US dollar millionaires, about how they are looking to spend their money, their time, and their outlook for the next year compared with the last 12 months. The overall picture that emerges is one of an affluent Chinese consumer who remains upbeat across a wide range of metrics.
Top Luxury Trends Shaping 2019
Managing Director, Agility Research & Strategy
Amrita Banta is managing director and co- founder of Agility Research & Strategy, ranked as one of the top 10 luxury research firms globally and the first luxury and premium insights and consultancy firm founded in Asia. To date, she has conducted more than 350 consulting engagements for some of the world’s biggest brands in the luxury, travel, and hospitality sectors.