Dubai: At sunset on Tuesday, on an artificial island off the coast of Dubai, Chanel will gather 1,000 of the world’s most fashionable people, including 300 local and international media and a handful of celebrities, for its latest cruise collection fashion show.
Each May, the cruise presentation travels to the world’s most glamorous cities, and for the first time, Chanel is bringing it to Dubai.
Fashion eyes around the world will watch not only the clothes on the runway, the famous models and the air-kissing at the cocktail party that follows: Dubai’s fashion creed will be showcased as much as the tweed jackets and quilted handbags the brand is famous for.
The decision to host the major fashion event was the result of a successful celebrity exhibition last year, The Little Black Jacket, in Downtown Dubai, and personal interest from the label’s fiercely innovative 80-year-old creative director Karl Lagerfeld.
“It was obvious we have to come here,” Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of fashion activities, said in Dubai on Monday. “When we started to work on the idea, we received very strong support from the local government, and for them, Chanel coming for a unique show in Dubai was something which makes sense. We are here to launch the cruise collection in an event from Dubai, for Dubai, but also for the world. We know it will be something global and good, both from Chanel and for Dubai.”
The cruise collection is a shoulder range of clothing that goes onto shop floors in October-November, before the full spring-summer collection, and while it was originally created for jet-setters escaping Europe’s winters, the range has now become one of Chanel’s biggest sellers.
“Cruise stays in the boutique until June, about six-eight months, with a very strong level of sell-through everywhere. For our customers, a lot of them are living in hot climates, and they love to see this kind of product in the boutique. At Chanel, two collections are still growing double-digit: Cruise and the Metiers D’art collection.”
Although Pavlovsky describes the Middle East region as “booming” he adds Chanel is “still in our development process” here. The brand currently directly operates three boutiques in the UAE (two in Dubai and one in Abu Dhabi), and one shoe shop at Level Shoe District, with shoes being an “incredible” area of sales, along with handbags. Coming in the next few months is a boutique at Dubai International Airport.
“We know we have a large ready-to-wear customer base and now we have to adapt our boutiques to best welcome them, to serve them, which is always quite challenging. We have a lot of local customers, and also a lot of people coming from abroad. We need to adapt to this specificity. If we are here, it’s because it’s important and key for us. But again we don’t want to go too fast and we are understanding the business and developing the business. So, step by step.”
The island on which Tuesday’s event will take place is a few hundred metres off the coast of Jumeirah Beach Park, and until Chanel got involved, was completely undeveloped. The brand has had to install water and electricity, all for a one-off event, although Pavlovsky will not reveal the cost of the event. Chanel, a privately-held company, does not disclose financial information.
“The only thing I can say is that if we do organise any of these events, it’s part of our global communications, and if we do it it’s because it makes sense for the brand, for the region.”
But he’s visibly excited about it all, saying with a laugh, “it looks crazy”.
“You see Dubai from an angle that you cannot imagine. That’s part of the creativity of the brand, to find a way to show new angles to what you see. Everything has to be surprising.”
Chanel’s creativity knows few bounds, but as a successful fashion brand, it’s earned the right to take those risks, with the blessing of the business side.
“Our business model is based on creativity,” says Pavlovsky. “If we want to differentiate in this luxury world, with all the strong brands everywhere, I think that we have to be very loyal to our credo. Our strategy is to put all our efforts into creativity, because it’s the beginning of everything. When you get the right creativity, I think it’s quite easy to develop as a business.”
Chanel puts out a whopping eight collections a year — six fashion ranges and two in accessories — created by Lagerfeld and his right hand, Virginie Viard, the Chanel studio director, and the risk, says Pavlovsky, is borne by them.
“All these people who are developing the collections, are taking risk all day long. It’s about their capacity to set up the next trend... and after on my part, is to develop the business link to this level of risk that they take all the time. The idea is to be able to push them — and it’s easy with them — to grow in the right direction and at the end of the day, to be sure at boutique level, we can find the right product and seduce the customers. The customers want to see new collections, and when the message is strong, I think the connection is easier,” he said.
