"Wendi Deng?" repeated Amber, our Chinese guide, ears cocked towards our conversation in the back seat of the air-conditioned saloon that whisked us through the sweltering streets of Shanghai, "she's my role model".
Amber it transpired, is also a PR, scooping up the business cards of every Western journalist who comes her way and inviting them to sample Shanghai's latest destination restaurant. At least it will be a destination by the time Amber's finished with it.
IN PICTURES: Stars celebrate as the Louis Vuitton Express pulls in to Shanghai
Amber's multiple salaries don't quite qualify her to be a Louis Vuitton customer - yet. The three attendants hovering around the hotel lifts, ready to press the buttons - should guests be too woozy from the toxic pea-souper blanketing the entire city in clouds so thick and low you can almost reach out and teach them, or too wilted by the 39C heat to extend their own digits - won't be shopping there just yet either. But just as New York, that other great coastal engine, did, Shanghai has fully bought into the dream of self-advancement via retail therapy. "Europe is finished," observed a Hong Kong-based Indonesian journalist at a cocktail party to celebrate Louis Vuitton's latest store opening, that was held in one of the few remaining colonial buildings in Shanghai. "Shanghai's the city of the 21st century."
From left: Christopher Zanardi-Landim, Gong Li, Yves Carcelle and Jordi Constans
It's hard not to agree with this prognosis initially. The sheer scale of China can seem simultaneously exhilarating, overwhelming and oppressive - Shanghai's predicted population of 45 million by 2025 puts London's recent growth spurt into perspective. But if Europe holds its nerve, plays to its strengths - luxury, heritage goods, creative ingenuity, product integrity - and gets on a plane to sell them to these megalithic markets, then it's far from a busted flush.
Louis Vuitton has been doing precisely that since the early 1990s. "Quite a few of our competitors thought we were mad," recalls Yves Carcelle, LV's exiting CEO. "I remember one telling me it would take a generation for a Chinese luxury customer to evolve. But if you visited regularly back then, it soon became obvious that the country was changing every six months. In fact it's evolved with astonishing speed. What would take 20 years in the West happens here in two to five years."
Louis Vuitton's new store in Shanghai
When Vuitton opened its first store in China in 1992, the other major outpost of Western civilisation was a Kentucky Fried Chicken. "The only way we could reach potential customers was by liaising with luxury car brands. It was a case of contacting clients literally one by one."
That's ancient history now - along with everything else that's more than 20 years old. Last week, Vuitton unveiled its new flagship. There were the requisite parties, attended by hordes of journalists, leggy, doe-eyed TV presenters complete with trailing camera crew, and the inevitable phalanx of exquisite Chinese film stars. The following evening, everyone returned for the fashion show: a replica of the one that took place in Paris in March. Yes that one - the one with the steam train that had been hand-built for the show by a fleet of Vuitton craftsmen.
The train was packed into cases and shipped off to Shanghai. Marc Jacobs, on his first trip to China, followed, along with the entire Vuitton creative team, including Pat McGrath and her regiment of make-up artists; Guido Palau and his battalion of hairdressers; chief stylist Katie Grand; milliner Stephen Jones, who created the cloche hats for the show; and scores of models (including 15 Chinese ones). To say no expense was spared would be mealy-mouthed. Every expense was lavished. Consumer demand may be slowing in China, but it's still fuelling double-digit growth for Vuitton. In any case there's a plan B. Vuitton's next big store opening is in Kazakhstan.
"Selling is not the problem in China. The right space is the problem," says Carcelle. "It's a fight to find space for stores, and a fight to find enough space in magazines." The clamour for advertising pages is so intense that Vogue China now publishes 16 issues a year instead of the usual 12.
From left: Actresses Huo Siyan, Sun Li and model Lu Yan
"So how do you achieve expansion without over-saturating the market?" enquired one local journalist at a surprisingly probing press conference the day after the opening.
Good question. Louis Vuitton is keen to prove it's not in China simply to flog its brand to death. "The aim isn't expansion at all costs," says Carcelle. That's why, with a couple of exceptions, it confines its presence to the capital cities of each province and why it refuses to divulge the square footage of its stores.
The new four-storey extravaganza is in Plaza 66, a plush mall where Céline, Dior, Fendi and Chanel have also set out their stalls. What with all that marble, gold, natural light and tree-garlanded, open-air-terrace space, all of it designed by Vuitton stalwart Peter Marino, it's a palace. Or perhaps a cathedral. And in the same way that having a cathedral once marked out a city as an international centre, nowadays a Louis Vuitton flagship serves pretty much the same purpose. This one has been carefully divided into areas conceived as rooms, each devoted to monogrammed luggage, fashion bags, jewellery, ready-to-wear, or shoes. It is most definitely not a department store full of Vuitton, stresses Carcelle, however much it resembles one, but a "Maison", with its own apartment on top, one of only two in the world. The other one is on London's Bond Street.
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The apartment is where wealthier clients can order from the bespoke Haute Maroquinerie bag collection or made-to-order shoes that can cost tens of thousands. But really, it's not about the price so much as exclusivity. The key message is that for all its success, Louis Vuitton is not ubiquitous, hence the company's robust battle against counterfeits. You can hardly blame it. Fakery is so endemic in China, there are entirely fake Apple stores.
The Maison tag isn't simply affectation. Consumers all over the world show remarkably similar tendencies on their path towards what retailers call maturity. First they go for the shiny, brash stuff. Then they progress to the more discreet emblems of consumption. Finally they graduate to bespoke. The Chinese have achieved maturity at break-neck speed. That doesn't mean there aren't molls with surgically rounded eyes and pumped-up lips wearing Cavalli - but not nearly as many as there were in Russia in the early oligarch years. The average Chinese girl in the street favours demure clothes and seems to love Peter Pan collars - at least those in Shanghai do - even if she wears them with shorts. As for the socialites and actresses in the front row of the show, they were beautifully dressed - in Vuitton, naturally.
"I like that one," the actress Huo Siyan said to me, as a jewelled trouser suit that Jacobs himself described as "ugly chic" wafted past. Huo Siyan obviously didn't have any problems with that concept. "They get fashion all right," said the Indonesian journalist. And modern art - which is why Vuitton's collaborations (the latest is with Yayoi Kusama) are so crucial.
Westerners who worried that the tastes of the new rich in China would have a deleterious effect on luxury brands can rest assured. Luxury labels that used to export their flashiest, most obvious designs to China have had to rethink. This is a far more discerning market than anyone could have predicted a decade ago.
Louis Vuitton's train has been shipped from Paris to China
Perhaps there was always an advanced level of taste in China. At any rate, the most sophisticated customers are almost logo'd out. That's a challenge for a brand like Vuitton, whose core products are monogrammed luggage. "Actually, a monogrammed trunk is about as luxurious as it gets," says Carcelle. "There are three stages with this brand," added Jordi Constans, Louis Vuitton's incoming CEO. "The new customers, whose first purchase is the monogram. The next step is to buy the ready-to-wear, the jewellery or the plain handbags. Then there's the most sophisticated of all, the customer who appreciates the logo, not as an obvious outward sign of expense, but because of its history and glamour."
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To ensure that message reached the Chinese, Vuitton flew in its crack team of packers, advisors from its larger stores around the world, to show customers how to fold their new acquisitions. They demonstrated this undeniable skill during a drinks party before the fashion show, in a vast room decorated like a colonial salon. "It really is about the heritage and craft with this brand," says Constans. It always is when it comes to new markets, even ones that have done away with most of their own history.
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