Brands Woo Chinese Consumers With Experiences in Tough Economic Times

Brands large and small spent much of the last 12 months outdoing each other in China, creating immersive experiences that tapped into local culture in a bid to woo aspirational customers, who have only just begun loosening their purse strings in what remains a difficult macro-economic environment.

The past year will be remembered as one in which fashion, luxury and beauty looked beyond product and commerce to offer customers a sense of escape, an opportunity to enrich themselves — and woo younger shoppers who are rejecting luxury in favor of experiences.

Loewe sent a fleet of golden rental bikes into the streets of Shanghai, the country’s largest city, to mark the opening of its glittering new flagship, while Prada tapped filmmaker Wong Kar-wai to create a café and restaurant in the city, its first dining space in Asia.

Alexander Wang teamed with the bubble tea maker Heytea to create a signature brew, while Chanel took a musical turn for the launch of the Bleu de Chanel L’Exclusif fragrance. The brand invited guests to the Shanghai jazz bar, JZ Club, to watch Eric Chou, a Taiwanese pop singer, and James Li, a Shanghainese singer-songwriter, deliver soulful performances.

But it was Louis Vuitton that created the biggest splash, docking The Louis, a landmark retail, hospitality and exhibition space shaped like a cruise ship, in Shanghai.

With its metallic monogram exterior, glistening deck and stacked upper levels formed by zinc-coated Louis Vuitton trunks, the space sits at the entryway of HKRI Taikoo Hui, a luxury shopping mall in the heart of the city’s West Nanjing Road retail artery.    

Pietro Beccari described the landmark space, which nods to Vuitton’s steam trunk heritage and to the maritime history of Shanghai, the world’s biggest port, as an “experiential place where creativity meets excellence.”

He said that having retail, hospitality and culture under one roof “embodies our spirit of traveling in a cheerful way — not just across borders, but through ideas, emotions and inspiration.”

There is more to come as Louis Vuitton gears up for the Dec. 19 inauguration of its Maison Louis Vuitton store in Beijing’s Taikoo Li Sanlitun, a high-end shopping destination developed by Swire Properties.

Designed by renowned architect Jun Aoki, the building will feature the city’s first Louis Vuitton Café, making it the third mainland China location to offer a Vuitton-branded dining experience after The Hall in Chengdu and The Louis.

It’s the latest of its retail-tainment temples in Asia featuring a combination of exhibitions, exclusive collections and gastronomy, designed to lure back younger shoppers who have turned their backs on luxury products in favor of experiences.

This will bring Vuitton’s total number of stores to 56 in China, where its focus has shifted from adding new boutiques to renovating or relocating existing ones to occupy strategic zones in big cities such as Chengdu, Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai.

The façade of the Sanlitun boutique was designed by Aoki, and is made of hand-curved pieces of glass. The shapes were inspired by the organic forms of taihu stones, often used as signature pieces in Chinese gardens, and by a 2016 dress designed by Nicolas Ghesquière, artistic director of women’s collections at Vuitton.

Works by local artists are dotted throughout the space, which includes a VIP dining room with capacity for eight guests. The store has been designed to cater to a younger clientele, in a neighborhood that’s seeing an influx of luxury brands alongside more accessible offerings like sportswear.

“In this part of the city, we see a lot of Gen Z going to do their shopping,” Beccari said. “To create a second big pole in Beijing, I think, is strategically important.”

There are many who share Beccari’s views about retail investment in the region.

Connie Lee, chief executive officer and chief marketing officer of Chelsey House, a brand and retail management platform looking after Zimmermann, Mackage, R13 and Sporty & Rich in China, believes the country is one of the most exciting markets for building a brand right now.

She added that to compete, offering a great product is not enough.

“It’s about creating a brand that resonates deeply with its audience. Chinese consumers are dynamic and aspirational, and they are drawn to brands that reflect their lifestyle and offer emotional value,” Lee said.  

“To stand out, brands must create seamless, personalized experiences that feel intentional and are consistently executed across every touchpoint. When a brand fosters a sense of belonging and builds a genuine community, consumers don’t just notice the brand; they want to be part of it,” she added.

She pointed to retail-tainment — which ranges from fashion shows to celebrity Q&As to interactive product showcases during livestreaming — as a key means of creating experiences and connections for consumers to feel engaged and valued.

Louis Liu, cofounder and creative director of the Shenzhen- and New York-based creative agency Sixsix Studio, whose clients include Nars, said the collaboration between Lancôme and artist Cai Guo-Qiang for the Year of the Snake was a great example of “genius-level” creativity.

“He created a gunpowder painting for the brand called ‘Paris Rose.’ What’s brilliant about it is that it’s painted by cAI, a custom-built AI model. It learns from Cai’s artistic oeuvre, extensive writings, archival materials and documentation. To me, this collaboration is not only a commercialization attempt for the buzzy artificial intelligence boom, but also an in-depth exploration of Chinese culture and art,” Liu said.

Burberry also took an artistic turn for Lunar New Year, dressing brand ambassador Zhang Jingyi, models Zhang Lina and Alex Schlab in red and tweaking its “B” logo to create a small snake. The brand teamed with one of China‘s most celebrated bamboo-weaving artists, Qian Lihuai, to create nine bamboo art sculptures, as well as a series of screen savers. The project was a hit with online spectators in China.

The past year’s experiences and cultural moments were decidedly democratic, and different from the ultra-luxe trips and exclusive events designed for VVIP customers. There’s a reason for that.

Brands took the view that with a weak macroeconomic environment, high youth unemployment, and lower consumer confidence than in the past, they needed to think long-term, and create gateway experiences into their worlds.  

Penhaligon’s debuted its exhibition “Eau So British” in Shanghai, detailing the brand’s 155-year history with archive items and images, a founder’s story and royal connections. It also showcased Chinese artist He Xian’s interpretations of the brand and its products.

Gucci focused on its house icon — bamboo — during an exhibition at the historic mansion Sunke Villa. “Gucci Bamboo: Decoding an Icon” was open to the public free of charge from April 1 to 6. The show guided visitors through the bag’s evolution, and highlighted the techniques used to make the bags.

Curated by the Milan-based multidisciplinary studio 2050+, it featured installations and artworks that paid tribute to “the enduring influence of bamboo as a material of strength, resilience and elegance.”

Loro Piana, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s quiet luxury champion, unveiled its first exhibition “If You Know, You Know. Loro Piana’s Quest for Excellence” in March at Shanghai‘s Museum of Art Pudong, a massive white box structure overlooking the storied Huangpu River.

The retrospective, part of Loro Piana’s centennial celebration, was a comprehensive and sensory-friendly experience that fanned out across more than 10,000 square feet, telling the story of the brand’s family legacy, textile know-how, fashion prowess, its links to China and its devotion to the art world in 15 galleries.

According to Jonathan Siboni, founder and CEO of Luxuryinsight, which provides luxury, fashion and beauty brands with data-driven insights, “luxury exhibitions serve as a cultural bridge, transforming the way Chinese consumers perceive brands. While the volume of brand exhibitions in China suggests a possible saturation point, our data showed that there were as many exhibitions in the first two months of 2025 as in 2024 and a few factors confirm that this is more than just a passing trend.”

Judith Clark, curator of the Loro Piana exhibition, said China has been a hot bed for fashion exhibitions in recent years, and brands are not afraid to experiment.

With Loro Piana, she treated the exhibition as an avant-garde project, playing with the idea of museum practice in new ways.

“It was certainly part of the agreement that it would be not highlighting product, that it would be about process, that it would be about history, so I took that very seriously,” Clark said of her curatorial approach.

“And then there’s the relationship with the archive, which meant going back to basics, just going in and listening to the archivist, listening to the designers, listening to the history of the company and looking at this arc of the 100 years and seeing how to tell that story in a way that is evocative and appealing to an audience,” she added.

Pooky Lee, a protegee of Clark’s who now runs his own creative and curation agency Poptag in China, considers exhibitions a more immersive, multipurpose means of communication.

“Compared with a fashion show, an exhibition has more freshness and a more lasting cycle. On the other hand, the word exhibition has become fluid and diversified. It’s no longer limited to a museum context, but also to welcoming surroundings like commercial spaces. Therefore this gives brands more creative autonomy to customize the exhibitions as they like,” said Lee.

— With contributions from Joelle Diderich (Paris)