Fashion’s lavish destination shows are back — but not as before

On Thursday afternoon, at the landmark Monte-Carlo Beach hotel just outside Monaco, Chanel stages its first international Cruise show since creative director Virginie Viard made her debut at the head of the label in 2019.

It will be the climax of two days of festivities the brand is hosting for about 400 clients, press and celebrity brand ambassadors including Charlotte Casiraghi, who is 11th in line to Monaco’s throne.

It is only the beginning. Several dozen of those who attend Chanel’s show will soon be jetting off to La Jolla, California, for Louis Vuitton on May 12; to Castel del Monte in Italy’s Puglia region for Gucci on May 16; and to New York for Balenciaga on May 21. Dior and Max Mara will stage their own shows in Spain and Portugal, respectively, later in June. And in July Dolce & Gabbana will host its 10th Alta Moda show, which is held in different cities in Italy.

Early in the pandemic, I predicted that these fabulous, far-flung destination shows — which were looking increasing out of step in a climate crisis — would go the way of the dodo. Although there are no concrete estimates on the environmental impact, brands typically fly out hundreds of models, staff and press, sometimes privately, for these events (not to mention the hundreds of flights guests book for themselves). Instead they are back, and as numerous as before.

Last week Pucci took to Capri to introduce its first designs from new artistic director Camille Miceli, just as Dior unveiled its pre-fall women’s collection in Seoul. Dior, LVMH’s second-largest brand by sales, will also for the first time host a destination show for its men’s Spring collection, to be held in Los Angeles on May 19. And Chanel will again be traveling in June, taking the Metiers d’ Art collection it unveiled outside Paris in December to Florence.

“These brands need to be visible after two years of restrictions,” says Thomas Chauvet, head of luxury goods research at Citi. “To do an event that will be completely amplified in all sorts of online channels helps [these brands] with their deep pockets differentiate themselves.”

Coco Chanel is credited with inventing the concept of “Cruise” in 1919, when she showed an off-season collection designed for affluent European and American women who holidayed south in the French Riviera or Palm Beach in search of mid-winter sun. Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld reintroduced Cruise collections in the 1980s, soon followed by Dior.

Those early shows were “strictly for clients,” recalls Louis Vuitton CEO Michael Burke, then the head of Dior’s US operation. “And the press being what the press needs to be, they got ahold of it, and next thing you know, it’s not just for clients anymore, but also a big image event.”

But after two years of travel restrictions in which luxury brands shifted their focus from attracting tourists to deepening ties with local customers, and learned to lean on their local teams to stage events — Burke says Vuitton is taking a new approach to Cruise. Whereas once local guests accounted for about a quarter of seats, in La Jolla they will take up the majority. The event will also be smaller overall, with between a third and half of the number of guests than at pre-pandemic Cruise shows.

“Some of our best shows, not a single person [from our headquarters] travelled,” says Burke, citing the Louis Vuitton men’s event staged in Shanghai in 2020, which was entirely organized by the China team. “That has created talent and skillset in our local teams that is not going to vanish. They now know how to produce, execute, scout [models] and create music for their shows, completely. We will of course provide inspiration, but we don’t replicate shows anymore.”

Executives say the cost of a destination show is not meaningfully different to those it hosts during Paris Fashion Week but the return on investment is better. The venues make for stunning backdrops for the collections — see the exuberantly flounced dresses of Dolce & Gabbana’s last Alta Moda collection shot aboard a fleet of gondolas in Venice, or the graphic, streamlined dresses of Louis Vuitton’s Cruise 2017 collection against the futuristic sweep of the Niteròi Contemporary Art Museum in Rio — providing visual assets that grace the front pages of newspapers and are shared widely on Instagram.

“It’s a real opportunity to tell our story and have everyone’s attention for three whole days, as opposed to Milan where we have a 20-minute slot [amid] 10 other shows,” says Ian Griffiths, creative director of Max Mara. The label is planning a number of activities for its 200 guests in Portugal in June, including local tours, lunches and dinners.

“For a major show [at Paris Fashion Week]if you get a few lines [in a newspaper], you are happy,” says Chanel fashion president Bruno Pavlovsky, speaking in Monaco the day before Chanel’s Cruise show. “Here, the quality is deeper.”

It’s not only about the shows. Cruise collections are also big revenue drivers for brands. Sometimes labeled “Pre-Spring” or “Resort”, they tend to arrive in stores in October and November and stay on store shelves at full price much longer than the main season collections, outselling them by a significant margin.

“Their weight has become bigger and bigger,” says Pavlovsky. “The Cruise collection is delivered in October [and stays until] June.”

And so the collections will continue to travel. But with the brands spending two years speaking up about their respective commitments to sustainability, might the return of these shows seem, well, incongruous?

“[Companies such as] LVMH tends to communicate around better materials . . . and on resale,” says Citi’s Chauvet. “They won’t go so far as stopping a major communications event.”

Vuitton’s Burke says the brand is “clearly” thinking about the environmental impact of Cruise, noting that he himself travels “far less than he used to two years ago.” His hope is that guests won’t just drop in for the show, but make a longer stay in southern California.

Cruise “is still about travel, being inspired by travel,” he continues. “Our industry wouldn’t exist if we weren’t inspired by cultures from all over the world . . . We just have to be a lot smarter about it, travel less.”

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