City Lights
Louis Vuitton is hitting the road with its men's pre-fall collection.
The line designed by men's creative director Pharrell Williams will be presented on Nov. 30 in Hong Kong, marking the first time the pre- collection will be showcased in a physical runway show. Williams showed his debut collection in Paris in June, with a mega- event that was attended by Beyoncé, Rihanna and Zendaya.
Vuitton's links to Hong Kong date back more than four decades: Its first store there opened at The Peninsula hotel in 1979 and it now has seven boutiques.
The world's biggest luxury brand has also staged major exhibitions, including “Louis Vuitton: A Passion for Creation” in 2009, for which artist Richard Prince wrapped the Hong Kong Museum of Art with enlarged replicas of pulp-fiction novel covers, and the “Time Capsule” exhibit in 2017.
Vuitton lauded Hong
Kong as “cosmopolitan and vibrant, a city that has for centuries been a crossroads of people and trade [ and] a melting pot of East and West that has given rise to a thriving metropolis of art, culture and industry.” It did not disclose the precise location of the upcoming show, which will be its first in the special administrative region of China.
Hong Kong's August retail sales rose 13.7 percent compared with the same month in 2022, helped by an increase in visitor arrivals, according to the latest figures released by the Census and Statistics Department.
It quoted a government spokesman as saying that the retail sector would continue to benefit from the ongoing recovery of inbound tourism in the near term. Sales should also be supported by positive consumer sentiment amid improved labor market conditions, and the "Night Vibes Hong Kong" campaign of events and promotions, he said.
The Immigration Department recorded a total of around 1.1 million visitors from mainland China coming to Hong Kong through sea, land and air control points during the eight- day National Day Golden Week, which ran from Sept. 29 to Oct. 6. This represented 85 percent of the levels recorded between 2017 and 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic shut borders.