‘Quiet luxury’ trend gets a fresh spin in China

When 32-year-old Diane Luo bought a Loro Piana Extra Pocket L19 bag in Shanghai last year she didn’t need to do much apart from paying the pouch’s £1,910 price tag. This year, however, the popularity of the mini bag has surged so much that, Luo says, she would need to build a relationship with the sales staff before getting access to the coveted accessory, a trade-off known in Chinese as “pei huo”, which means buying some other goods to get the one that you really want.

“I care more about design than brand, and I don’t like items full of logos very much,” says Luo, who works in finance. “Loro Piana fits into the quiet and normcore style that has become trendy in the last two years. It’s simple and elegant.”

With its classical aesthetic, muted colour palette and focus on premium materials, LVMH-owned Loro Piana has been one of the beneficiaries of the “quiet luxury” trend — a preference for subtle and elegant designs that is currently popular among fashionable urbanites. In China, the trend is best known as “old money style”, a hashtag that currently has 53mn views on social platform Xiaohongshu, where influencers give tips on how to nail “nobility” through clothing.

In June and July, the Extra Pocket bag, which was launched in autumn/winter 2019, reached the second spot in Chinese luxury handbag KOL (an abbreviation used to describe a “key opinion leader”, or influencer, in China) Mr Bags’ list of “Top 30 trendiest bags”, the result of a monthly survey across the influencer’s following of more than 7mn across social platforms Weibo, Xiaohongshu and WeChat. Other understated accessories, such as the Hermès mini Lindy, the Loewe Paseo bag and the Margaux tote from American brand The Row made the cut. In a recent Weibo video titled “Old money bags 🔥 Which one is the most worth buying?”, Mr Bags sums up the trend as “elegance that doesn’t show off, a quiet style that bewitches people”. 

Blondie Tsang, president of luxury retailers Lane Crawford and Joyce, first noticed a shift in what VIP customers were buying last year. “Sales in brands and products that are more obvious and with certain logos just went quiet, while brands that are more minimalist, timeless and emphasising quality workmanship and materials really started taking off,” she writes via email. “It’s a major shift and key driver in our China business, and it’s showing no signs of slowing.”

In part, the rise of quiet luxury in China stems from a similar socio-economic context to the one that has spurred the trend in Europe and North America. The economic slowdown triggered by Covid-19 — which in China has resulted in record levels of youth unemployment, reaching 21 per cent in June, and slumping house prices — is squeezing middle class consumers, while the wealthiest individuals have continued to buy.

“Outbound travel from China is still about half of what it was in 2019 but spending is almost on par, which shows that the people who are engaged in luxury today are the uber wealthy people,” explains Erwan Rambourg, global head of consumer & retail research at HSBC. These top spenders are believed to be more mature luxury consumers, favouring the classic and timeless styles that luxury brands are now striving to provide.

“The people who are buying are not first-time purchasers, they are not buying luxury to be recognised as part of a group, they are buying more for themselves than for others. And so they would look more at the intrinsic quality of the product rather than flashy colours or visible logos,” says Rambourg. 

In China, research from BCG shows that the top 11 per cent of customers — who spend more than Rmb300,000 (£32,500) per year on luxury goods — make up 40 per cent of all sales. As the importance of this class grows, luxury brands have zeroed in on their efforts to allure them. In China, brands including Chanel and Dior have opened invite-only salons in some of the most prestigious malls to cater to VIP consumers. Harrods will open a private members’ club in Shanghai this year, with annual fees starting from Rmb150,000 (£16,250).

There are, however, differences in how quiet luxury is perceived in the Chinese market and different causes for its popularity. In China, first-time luxury buyers have been the driver of luxury growth for the past two decades, with 10 to 15 per cent (mostly younger shoppers and people from lower-tier cities) entering the luxury world every year for the past five years. Veronique Yang, managing director and senior partner at BCG, says these younger consumers are attuned to the effect of international TV shows such as Succession, which has popularised the idea of stealth wealth dressing. These shoppers are also style-driven and in constant search of newness, which “old money style” as an aesthetic provides in a market that has long been dominated by logos and recognisable branding. “The concept of logo, the concept of loud luxury, is established in the Chinese market, but this quiet luxury is new, and therefore attracts attention,” says Yuwan Hu, vice president of Daxue Consulting.

Hu also points at a shift in the way Chinese consumers express status. “The attitude is less about showing you are rich and more about showing that you have taste,” she says. It’s something that BCG’s Yang also recognises. “Under these economic conditions, people don’t want to look too rich and too showy with big brand logos . . . but they still do want other people to understand and recognise their social status,” she says. Old-money-style bags popular in Mr Bags’ “Top 30 trendiest bags” list, such as the Loro Piana Extra Pocket L19 and The Row Margaux tote, are still very recognisable despite the absence of logos and branding. “Chinese consumers still hope that other people can recognise from the small details that this is a luxury brand, but in a toned-down style,” says Yang. 

In this context, quiet luxury — which in Europe and the US has been described as a sober way to dress for the wealthy in a time of sharp economic and social divisions — becomes in itself a signifier of class and status in China, where inequality remains high despite government calls for “common prosperity”.

“Today’s trends reflect more of a continuing widening of wealth disparities than a quest for common prosperity,” Pooky Lee, fashion curator and co-director of Shanghai-based creative agency Poptag, writes via email. “The polarisation of the local market perfectly reflects this: people either buy high-end luxury goods or buy Uniqlo. There’s less and less room for others.”

Additional reporting from Wang Xueqiao in Shanghai

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