Diane von Furstenberg Returns to Hong Kong After Two-year Hiatus
LONDON — Diane von Furstenberg last week unveiled a new physical store in Hong Kong at the popular, upscale shopping mall Harbour City shopping in Tsim Sha Tsui.
The opening of the approximately 1,000-square-foot store marks the brand’s return to the Hong Kong offline retail market after a two-year hiatus. The brand operated a store in Landmark, a luxury shopping mall in Central, pre-pandemic.
More from WWD
The new space comes with a clean and elegant interior design with a flowing glass curtain wall, water mill marble flooring, and gold-plated titanium display racks, showcasing the latest collections. The boutique also highlights DVF’s iconic black-and-white chainlink print and signature graphic.
During COVID-19, the land border between mainland China and Hong Kong was shut, which led to sharp declines in retail sales. For the first five months of 2020, retail sales decreased by 34.8 percent compared with the same period in 2019.
But since the beginning of this year, as mainland tourists returned, Hong Kong has logged consecutive six-month growth in retail sales, with May figures rising 18.4 percent from a year earlier.
Riding the momentum, DVF said the new store bears “great significance” to its expansion plan in the Greater China region, as “Hong Kong has long been regarded as the center of Asian fashion and one of the busiest commercial and financial centers in the world.”
“With the continuous improvement of the macro environment in the global fashion and luxury industry and the reignited enthusiasm of consumers in the Greater China region, we believe that there will be more opportunities and space in the Hong Kong market,” the brand added.
Jessie Chen, global partner of DVF and president of DVF China, described the new store as a “milestone for the brand in the Asia Pacific region, and we hope to bring a new shopping experience to Hong Kong’s fashion consumers.”
In an earlier interview with WWD, von Furstenberg said her biggest client during the pandemic was her Chinese distributor Chen, who has been exclusively operating the DVF franchisee business in China from 2011 to the present via a partnership under Shanghai Fairywood Co.
In October 2020, the brand entered a partnership with Glamel Trading Ltd., a Hong Kong-based firm that’s also owned by Chen. Glamel is now the exclusive operations partner with DVF worldwide. High Fashion is the factory in China that has been DVF’s supply chain partner for 25 years, and partners with Glamel and DVF to make DVF womenswear.
“It was very important that I continued the relationship with them,” said von Furstenberg, adding that the DVF online flagship is on Tmall Luxury Pavillion and a stand-alone DVF China site will be launched in 2024.
Best of WWD
