Hong Kong has always punched above its weight as a luxury shopping destination, thanks to well-heeled locals and the mainland tourism boom of the 2010s. It wasn’t long ago that tens of millions of visitors poured into the city every year, many of them with their eyes on tax-free goods from Hermès, Versace, Burberry and other luxury brands. But the 2019 protests and three years of Covid restrictions — including an extended border closure and other limits on travel — put the fate of the entire luxury market in doubt.    

 

Now things seem to be turning around. After a decline at the very beginning of the pandemic, revenues from luxury goods have grown continuously from US$11.26 billion in 2020 to an estimated $14.74 billion this year, according to data firm Statista. Hongkong Land recently announced a US$1 billion (HK$7.8 billion) plan to renovate LANDMARK, its interconnected collection of shopping malls in the heart of Central.

 

Hermès Landmark. Entrance. Photo via RDAI

 

Key to the scheme will be the development of what the real estate company is calling 10 “Maison destinations”: multi-storey spaces for the world’s top luxury brands. The retailers will be designing the spaces themselves, with the goal of “telling their own stories,” according to a statement by Hongkong Land. Among them is the new Sotheby’s Maison, a two-storey space designed by Dutch firm MVRDV, that reflects the auction house’s pivot to luxury retail. It will offer a selection of art, luxury objects and collectibles available for purchase.

 

“We need spaces to create these extraordinary experiences,” Alexander Li, Hongkong Land’s chief retail officer for commercial property in Hong Kong and Macau, told the media. “There is a trend of consumers moving towards experiences. It will take some time for [shoppers] to come back, but we can create something to give them a reason to come.”

 

That underlines how much the world of luxury now revolves around experience, not just high-end products. “The role Hong Kong is playing in the luxury market is very different compared to before,” says Veronica Wang, an industry analyst and partner at consulting firm OC&C. A strong US dollar — which by proxy has buoyed the Hong Kong dollar, thanks to a currency peg — means mainland Chinese consumers are now turning to Japan for their luxury purchases, taking advantage of the low yen. Luxury retailers are shrinking their footprint in Hong Kong but investing in quality over quantity.

 

“Shoppers don’t only care about the purchase, they care about the overall experience,” says Wang. “Brands need to invest in places where you can feel a connection to the brand. If you look at the trend in luxury consumers post-Covid, it’s more polarised. Rich people are still rich, they still buy Hermès, they still buy Chanel. But middle-class consumers have become more cautious. So to balance that you have to offer a very good experience.”

 

Inside Hermès Lee Gardens. Jewelley section. Photo via RDAI

 

Even big spenders — VICs or Very Important Customers in industry jargon — are looking for a memorable experience. “They can pay for luxury vacations and Michelin-starred dining experiences on their own. So, luxury brands and retailers are offering access to the kind of experiences even their money can’t buy to build personal relationships,” noted a recent report in The Business of Fashion, a trade journal.

 

To do that, brands need good design. “When somebody goes into the shop it’s to experience the brand culture, to really feel like they can live it and be part of it,” says architect Julia Capp, who worked for several years in Hong Kong and Shanghai before joining Paris-based luxury architecture firm RDAI, where she is now CEO. RDAI opened its first overseas office in Hong Kong in 2021, banking on the city’s ease of access to many different parts of Asia, which has been a big market for the architecture firm. In December, Capp will be at Business of Design Week (BODW) to speak about the relationship between luxury and craft.

 

One of RDAI’s main clients is Hermès, for which the studio has designed stores around the world, including the ones in Prince’s Building and Lee Garden. (The relationship was more than just professional: RDAI’s late founder, Rena Dumas, was married to Hermès president Jean-Louis Dumas.) “Hermès in particular likes to provide an experience that is relative to where their shops are,” says Capp. “A particular experience when we’re in Tokyo, a different experience in Sydney, a different experience in Hong Kong.”

 

Case in point: RDAI’s renovation of the Lee Garden branch of Hermès, which reopened in June. “Lee Garden is a pretty old store for Hermès in Hong Kong,” says Denis Montel, RDAI’s artistic director and executive vice president, noting it first opened in 1997. “This is the third generation of the store that we designed. So we know it quite well, we know its constraints. The idea was trying to find a nice story to tell, bringing a bit of fantasy, a bit of colour.”

 

Hermès Lee Gardens. Photo by Samantha Sin via RDAI

 

Montel says he is fascinated by Hong Kong’s relationship between “nature and super-urbanity,” something epitomised in his mind by the banyans that can be seen growing from stone walls throughout the older parts of the city. “That was quite inspirational,” he says. With three floors to work with, “we decided to tell a little story about how Hong Kong is about being on the beach, Hong Kong is about being in the forest and Hong Kong is about living in the city.”

 

The influence of banyans is particularly evident in the shop’s ruffled stone façade, whose lines evoke the aerial roots that hang down from those grandiose trees. Metal panels continue the theme indoors. A mosaic floor evokes not only the mosaic tiles found in so many older Hong Kong spaces but also the Hermès flagship store on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. A stone staircase meant to evoke a waterfall links the three floors of retail space. The overall effect is less retail shop and more private club; it is sedate and intimate, a place that invites visitors to take their time.

 

"We don’t have a very defined method for approaching a design," notes Montel. “We study the location itself and the environment – what is specific in the neighbourhood. Then we are progressing in two directions. One is to sketch the space and the other one is to collect many images, films, texts, whatever, about the context, trying to find inspiration. And the best of course is to spend some time in the city we are going to work. The idea is to feel the place.”

 

One way to capture that feeling of place is by using local vernacular crafts – the topic of Capp’s upcoming talk at BODW. “We’ve been exploring and meeting and understanding different craftspeople throughout the world,” says Capp. “We have a team of five people in our design material library who are constantly meeting new craftsmen and materials in all regions. When a project comes up in Asia, the team starts to work on it and they have some ideas and we look at the different materials and crafts that we discovered. Sometimes we’ll look at a craft and it will be in our library for years and years before we have an opportunity to use it.

 

One example of that is kumiko, a Japanese technique of joining pieces of wood without the use of nails or glue in order to create decorative screens. “It’s a very old and specific method dating from the 16th century,” says Montel. “The design is always the same, it looks like a flower, it’s always a repetitive pattern.” With the help of parametric design software, he was able to use the technique to create an exceptionally large screen for the façade of the Fukuoka Iwataya Hermès store. Parts of the screen are more opaque than others, creating a beguiling effect that hides some parts of the interior while revealing others. Craftspeople installed the screen by hand in the traditional way.

 

Kumiko screen inside Hermès Fukuoka Iwataya. Photo by Stirling Elmendorf via RDAI

 

In Hong Kong, a particular local craft inspired the Hermès location in the Prince’s Building, which RDAI renovated in 2016. Montel is fascinated by bamboo and wanted to create a façade that evoked the bamboo scaffolding used for construction sites and pop-up theatres. “It had a modern technique that was really quite innovative,” he says. As hard as he pushed, though, Montel was turned down by the Buildings Department, which cited Hong Kong’s strict building code. “They said bamboo is not a material adapted to construction.”

 

Hermès Landmark’s bamboo-inspired façade. Photo by Masao Nishikawa via RDAI

 

Instead, they installed copper-coloured anodised aluminium fins on the façade to give the appearance of bamboo. Actual bamboo was used for the interior. “Bamboo is a material we like a lot,” says Montel. “We have developed many projects using bamboo and in different ways, [with] different kinds of weaving techniques. We have a few stores where 100 percent of the cabinets are in bamboo. We are using it for floorings, for decorative panels.” He cites bamboo’s sustainability — it is much faster growing than other types of wood — and adaptability as its main source of appeal.

 

“It’s very rich. You can transform it into many different ways,” says Montel. “What we like also is that it’s a very humble material. We like to bring very humble materials into very high-quality execution with the best craftsmen.” The outcome often lends itself to a warm environment, a clear sense of place and a memorable experience — and in the evolving world of high-end retailing, experience is the biggest luxury of all.

 

Julia Capp will speak at this year’s Business of Design Week (BODW) which runs from December, 2024 with a special focus on the relationship between luxury and craft.

 

Writer: Christopher DeWolf 

Photos: Courtesy of RDAI 

 

This column is produced in partnership with Zolima CityMag, an online magazine that explores Hong Kong’s arts, design, history and culture.