Luxury Fashion Goes Local
The localisation trend is changing luxury retail
Buying a new Louis Vuitton bag on the Champs-Elysees in Paris or a Tiffany Bracelet on New York’s Fifth Avenue may have once been a norm for luxury consumers, but times have changed. International travel and luxury shopping have always been happy bedfellows as eager jetsetters travelled the globe to get their hands on enviable luxury goods. But the impact of the pandemic left luxury brands scrambling to make sense of the changing wants, needs and expectations of luxury consumers. With multiple store closures, reduced marketing budgets, impacted supply chains and accelerated e-commerce strategies, the luxury landscape looks very different now from what it did a few short years ago.
After attending the Business of Fashion’s annual VOICES event in November last year I heard how many big fashion players are pivoting their approaches and going hyper-local to reach a new wave of consumers. Michael Murray, CEO of FLANNELS was in conversation with Cathaleen Chen, Cecilia Morelli, co-founder of Mumbai luxury boutique Le Mill, and Appear Here founder Ross Bailey, and there was a common consensus amongst them all. As domestic luxury spending is on the up there's a paradigm shift taking place. Notions of luxury are subjective and constantly changing, but a local luxury focus and a hyper-local design approach is giving the sector the overdue shake-up it needs.
Go big and local or go home
Luxury-focused stores are popping up across typically underserved cities worldwide. Flannels have locations across the UK such as Bath, Birmingham, Cardiff, Coventry, Glasgow, Newcastle, Oxford, Sheffield and York as well as multiple London locations. Gucci’s 100 pop-ups spanned the globe appearing everywhere from Shoreditch in London to Miami’s Design District and Holt Renfrew in Vancouver, and in Shanghai Prada livened up a wet market by painting its logo and branding above store entrances and wrapping fruit and vegetables in similar packaging with plans to replicate this location-first format in Milan, Rome, Paris, New York, London and Tokyo.
But it doesn’t end there. In April 2022 French luxury house Hermès unveiled a local-first luxury store concept in Austin, and Louis Vuitton has opened its third hub in mainland China in the city of Chengdu. And Nike's Nothing beats a Londoner campaign toured under-the-radar London locations such as Peckham and Brixton, as well as suburban locations and the River Thames.
With such big names shifting to a hyper-local focus it seems as if neighbourhood brick-and-mortar stores that have local cultural relevance are the new urban frontiers. Maybe such places see more success due to their emotional connection with consumers, or maybe big luxury brands are finding relevance in less-saturated markets. Or it could be the fact that given regional patriotism and a sense of community belonging is on the rise, people are taking pride in their origin stories and they want to put down roots by shopping with brands that take a more nuanced, regional approach to the places they set up shop.
A higher touch of local, cultural relevance
Buying into a brand that's close to home fuels more of an emotional connection than travelling far and wide to buy a brand that you can get anywhere. Local brand hubs, stores and even pop-ups have the potential to connect more meaningfully with customers by going against the typical one size fits all brand narrative. Mass marketing is out and local cultural relevancy is in. Made in China and made in Africa labels are becoming less stigmatised and more socially accepted as they break through the noise and become symbolic of local culture and regional heritage.
With this higher touch of local relevance, luxury brands old and new are putting down roots and investing in regional identities that create brand-consumer relationships built to last. Luxury connoisseurs have a diverse set of expectations and as they move away from big cities to commuter belts and suburban areas new retail hotspots that offer them a little something extra, that little touch of luxury that's personalised and local that they can't get elsewhere, is keeping them invested.
As the world opens up once again with travel restrictions being scrapped in the strictest of countries, and with tightening households budgets meaning people have less room for discretionary spending, will luxury brands continue to go heavy on local-first mindsets or will they return to the global strategies they had in place before the chaos of 2020 began? All in all, it’s a balancing act and a tough line to toe, but luxury going local feels like a breath of fresh air in a sector that can feel suppressed and stale.
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