Opinion / Alexis Self
Follower of fashion
Chinese multinational conglomerate Fosun Fashion Group announced yesterday that it will henceforth be known as Lanvin Group. You don’t need an MBA to recognise an attempt to cash in on the worldwide recognition of the group’s most prized asset (and shrug off a less storied name). Lanvin, founded by Jeanne Lanvin in 1889, is a product of the belle époque and a time when Paris was the engine room of modern European fashion. Today it is the third-oldest French fashion house still in operation and a name that’s synonymous with that most nebulous of terms: luxury.
By contrast, the Fosun International Group was founded as the Guangxin Technology Development Company in Shanghai in 1992; today its various components are worth about $120bn (€104bn). But if Paris in the late 19th century was the centre of high-end fashion, China is in many ways its 21st-century successor. Fortune estimated the luxury goods market in the country to be worth $290bn (€250bn) in 2020. A considerable proportion of that is made up of European heritage brands, many of which are now owned by large international conglomerates such as Fosun. But even in its home market, it seems more likely that people would desire Lanvin over Fosun as a marker of taste.
What’s in a name? When Fosun bought Lanvin in 2018 it was acquiring a label in the very literal sense of the word; Jeanne Lanvin’s designs became known across fin-de-siècle Paris for their quality and propensity to define the avant garde. In a crowded marketplace, consumers tend to search for easy markers of such attributes. The problem is that, as with terms like “luxury”, a word can lose meaning through overuse. If Fosun decides to extend the Lanvin label to other products within its umbrella group (it operates, for example, in everything from travel to food), it could dilute the prestige that the label took so long to accrue, at such expense. If that happens, Fosun will find out that in the world of high fashion, there’s not only a lot to gain in a name but a lot to lose too.