Reprinted from: WWD International Fashion News
Original title: Focus | How does Maison Margiela accurately handle the "niche" plot of Chinese consumers?
As the first major marketing node after the epidemic, 520 Valentine's Day is an opportunity for many fashion and luxury brands to create marketing hotspots. On this spring's 520 Valentine's Day, Maison Margiela launched a wonderful avant-garde film with the theme of "Unlocking Love".
In the film of changing light and shadow, the famous model Xiang Setjing appears in an ambiguous space of light and shadow. Her monologue is a precious love poem that is being confessed to others, and also a statement of love for herself.
Under the dramatic transfer of visual language, the binary opposition between daily elements and romantic feelings is broken. They are intertwined and seem to tell us the essence of intimate feelings. Just like the inspiration source of this Snapped origami bag, the daily observation is also the most influential romantic place.
Maison Margiela Snatched 520 Exclusive Handbag In order to match the main candy color Snatched bag series, Maison Margiela also specially packaged the facade of the flagship store in Shanghai Jincang Wenhua with jumping color blocks, so that passers-by can also feel the beauty and sunshine of early summer. The exhibition space on the second floor of the store is built into a limited time experience space of 520 Snapped series. In the pure white space wrapped in Margiela style white cloth, the colorful and naughty Snapped bags also show more vitality.
Maison Margiela Shanghai Jincang Wenhua Flagship Store 520 Snatched Series Limited Time Experience Space Snapped, which means "capture", pays tribute to the new generation of rebels represented by individuality and diversity. Inspired by Japanese origami, creative director John Galliano created a bag with asymmetric and unique edges and corners: its sharp folding edge, flip cover and practical holding groove, which implied Mr. Galliano's understanding of "grasping": quickly grasping an object and finishing dressing in a hurry. The brand's iconic four corner seams and mirror elements are also vividly reflected in this avant-garde style bag.
The Snatched series of 520 provides two modeling options for handbags and storage bags: sweet lemon yellow, watermelon red and fresh lake blue, peony powder, lavender purple, with elegant and fresh summer atmosphere.
Maison Margiela Snatched 520 Exclusive Handbag As one of the flagship brands of "Pioneer Luxury Group" OTB, Maison Margiela's fire in China was no accident.
In the field of fashion, Maison Margiela has successfully found a differentiated track with a distinctive personality and more niche positioning than traditional luxury fashion brands. From the product level, the brand's hot selling items include men's and women's ready to wear clothes, Tabi series shoes and shoes, Snatched and Glam Slam cloud bags, and Maison Margiela Caf é, a daily long line, which not only shows the brand's ability to produce popular products frequently, but also gradually deepens the brand's position as a "symbolic" product in consumers' minds.
Maison Margiela Café Another "killer weapon" that enables the brand to maintain its niche charm, or luxury brand aura, tests the brand's ability to continue to "dream".
The Artisanal Couture high definition series created by Mr. Galliano after joining Maison Margiela has continued the essence of the brand structure and recycling, and has also become a new high definition product line recognized by the Paris Fashion Association.
In fact, the design elements of this series often appear in the ready to wear series. In the newly displayed co ed 2023 autumn and winter series, Mr. Galliano not only continued the story of gothic lovers in the Gaoding series, but also continued to use his expertise in folding clothes, broken stitching and other techniques to create a dramatic fashion carnival.
The endless inspiration and creativity, as well as the constantly iterative product series, have reached the target consumer group from different price ranges, making the brand cross circles successfully, harvesting young consumers from different circles, and finally creating an orderly expansion and highly recognizable brand product matrix.
Maison Margiela's classic four corner seam design elements and limited gifts of "SpellLove" spelling bee Take the eye-catching "four corner sewing" design element appearing on Snapped as an example: it is a classic element appearing in the spring, summer, autumn and winter series of the brand in 1997. The four corner logo intentionally exposed shows the "unfinished" state of a single product, and also hides a small hint that if consumers are sufficiently rebellious, The first thing I did after I bought it was to delete the white cloth quadrangle.
The design of the quadrangle originally expressed a de logo concept, but in Mr. Galliano's hands, it evolved into the concept of "Recicla" in 2020.
In 2019, Maison Margiela finally regained profitability 17 years after being acquired by OTB, with sales increasing by 6.4% to 1.53 billion euros. All channels and global markets will achieve counter trend growth in the epidemic ridden 2020.
It is reported that Mr. Galliano doubled the brand's income five years after he joined the brand. When the product line, brand tone and management team have been adjusted in place, Maison Margiela's breakthrough in accelerating development is still reflected in the breakthrough in the retail side.
Maison Margiela Shanghai Jincang Wenhua Flagship Store 520 Snatched Series Limited Time Experience Space After opening the global flagship store of Jincang Wenhua in the summer of 2022, Maison Margiela has also turned it into an offline marketing center of the brand.
Maison Margiela 2022 Artinal advanced customized series "Prison Fire Cinema" theme small exhibition Glam Slam Immersive Time Limited Exhibition opened every quarter, and the "Prison Fire Cinema" at the end of the year, because of its excellent curatorial content, quickly became the city's golden age of card punching. At the end of December last year, the brand transplanted the concept of time limited cinema to Suzhou's Renhengcang Street, creating a flash shop that lasted for two months.
Maison Margiela Suzhou Renhengcang Street Time Limited Boutique Through continuous flash marketing activities, Maison Margiela not only presented the brand's pioneering design concept more completely, reached more consumer groups, but also provided more photo and card materials for users of Little Red Book, further opening the brand's public awareness.
In just a few years, Maison Margiela has opened 22 boutiques in mainland China and Hong Kong, which shows the brand's determination to accelerate the layout of the Chinese market. Next, Maison Margiela also plans to go north to open the brand's first official flagship store in the core business district of Beijing.
However, the core of the brand's real rapid development is still its rebellious, deconstructive and innovative spirit of "not forgetting the original intention". WWD
Content planning by Daniela Gu from Huayi Tomorrow Fashion Content Center
Image Source Brand Official
