Chanel’s Bruno Pavlovsky says ‘Australia can be much bigger business’
Bruno Pavlovsky, the long-time president of fashion at Chanel, sees a lot of opportunity for the French luxury house in Australia.
Bruno Pavlovsky, the long-time president of fashion at Chanel, sees a lot of opportunity for the French luxury house in Australia.
The opening of a grand new store on Sydney’s Market St this week, in the old David Jones menswear building – the first in Australia to have an adjoining watches and fine jewellery boutique – speaks to exactly this.
At 1000sqm it will be the largest Chanel store in Australia, and was a long time coming.
“We were expecting this move for a while. It was quite difficult to find the right location and the right opportunity, but that will be a kind of re-anchor for the brand in Australia,” Pavlovsky tells The Australian over Zoom from his Paris office.
“We will include all the aspects of the brand … the objective will be to bring, in this new location, the creative energy of the brand as we are doing for every single boutique. But if we compare (the current boutique) in Castlereagh (St), which is a lovely but very tiny boutique, to Market St, I think that you see the difference. ”
“We have many countries, and Australia is part of it, where I believe we can do much bigger (and) much bigger business.”
Chanel will keep its boutique on Castlereagh St.
Lucie Juhel, managing director Australia and New Zealand at Chanel, says the new boutique will allow the brand to deepen its relationships with the Australian Chanel client.
“With more content and inspiration available online, the offline experience needs to surpass expectations,” she says. “The market has evolved significantly, with a growing appreciation for luxury and an increased demand for meaningful experiences.”
The addition of the watch and jewellery boutique is, Juhel says, a “milestone”.
Taking inspiration from the design of Gabrielle Chanel’s apartment on Rue Cambon Paris (which remains perfectly intact to this day, and as of 2013 acknowledged as a historical monument by the French Ministry of Culture) in such details as the lacquered coromandel screens, the watch and fine jewellery boutique will carry exclusive high jewellery creations for periods of time. As well as pieces from its patrimony collection such as the Lion Royal necklace (pictured right).
The watch and fine jewellery boutique follows similar concepts in Paris and Los Angeles, and speaks to Chanel’s growth in this category too. Chanel, like other luxury fashion houses, has proven legitimacy in the fine jewellery and watchmaking category. Each year the maison releases high jewellery collections, and since 1993 has owned an integrated watch manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the heart of the Swiss watchmaking industry. The new boutique will carry the J12 Bleu, a highlight from Chanel’s launches at the annual Watches & Wonders fair, in a shade of blue ceramic that took the watch creation studio five years to perfect.
For Frederic Grangie, president of Chanel watches and fine jewellery, it is important too that the new boutique represents its city host.
“You also need to adapt to the taste of the market and the feel of the market,” he says.
“If you look at New York and LA, they are completely different because one is quite open, airy, it’s LA, and the other is … a bit authoritarian, and that’s New York. So in Sydney (it’s) another story. But we wanted to be very welcoming. We wanted to be very, very luxurious but a bit more open than New York. So it’s a different type of environment.”
Grangie says the watches and fine jewellery category has serious potential in Australia. Globally, jewellery in particular is withstanding a luxury slowdown.
According to recent research from Bain & Company, the jewellery market grew 2 per cent to $US35bn ($54.1bn), with high jewellery (the top echelon of craftsmanship and gemstones) performing particularly well. By comparison, leather goods shrank about 3 per cent.
Grangie says watches and jewellery has been a fast-growing category for the brand over the past few years, with great potential. This first Australian watches and fine jewellery boutique is merely the beginning. “But at the same time, I think, looking at the next five years, we want to bring that message of pure player to Australia as well. Which means that we need to have more locations where you have that dedicated presence of watches and fine jewellery.
“So you will see more projects in Australia in the next five years. But this one will be the blueprint for the future ones. So it is so important to us.”
Designed by star architect and long-time Chanel collaborator Peter Marino, the new boutique retains its original 1936 heritage facade, housing two storeys dedicated to ready-to-wear fashion, handbags and shoes. The watches and fine jewellery boutique also has its own entrance. There are many odes to the brand’s famed boutique on Rue Cambon in Paris, including the mirrored stairs (from which Coco Chanel would watch her fashion shows, hidden from view), while the interiors include an eclectic assortment of antiques and commissions such as a Regency period writing desk that resembles one in Gabrielle Chanel’s apartment on Rue Cambon and her suites at the Ritz hotel, and suede vintage chairs that echo her love of shades of beige, by Italian designer Roberto Menghi who, like Coco Chanel, believed good design should solve a problem.
Commissioned artworks include a striking diptych painting, Hairstring/Mina Mina Dreaming, by Indigenous artist Judy Watson Napangardi and an abstract piece by Simon Hantai. A rock crystal chandelier by French jeweller Robert Goossens, a friend of Gabrielle Chanel, is another ode to her apartment. The story is that a crystal from a similar chandelier once fell on to the lap of Pablo Picasso when he was paying a visit to Mademoiselle.
Goossens Paris belongs to Chanel’s satellite of metiers d’arts, the collection of heritage brands – from button makers to hat makers – acquired by the maison in order to preserve their craftsmanship. Goossens makes much of Chanel’s costume jewellery – the kind beloved by Coco herself. Many of these metiers are now housed in the brand’s le 19M building on the outskirts of Paris. Later this month the most recent metiers d’art collection, which celebrates this craft, shown last year in Hangzhou, China, will arrive into the boutique.
For Pavlovsky, this commitment to preserving such craftsmanship is essential, not only for Chanel but for the luxury industry more broadly. It’s something he says is resonating particularly well with younger generations too.
“I can talk for hours about the importance of metiers d’art, the importance of embroideries, embellishments, et cetera. But also the importance of all our people who are working with this expertise,” he says.
“For me it’s quite interesting to see that when you visit our ateliers … you can see many, many, many young people. So the good news is that there are many young people interested in this expertise. They know that you need time to learn, you need time, we need to invest in education … I think the good news is that fashion, it’s about this expertise, it’s about this craft, it’s about this metier d’art, and that the new generation is still quite interested in these activities.”
Chanel – a brand with instantly recognisable products such as its tweed jackets and quilted handbags – has been one of the few brands to weather the global luxury slowdown well. Its most recent financial results pointed to a juggernaut finally slowing down after what Chanel chief executive Leena Nair called “unprecedented growth”.
“As a hundred-year brand, we expect ebbs and flows, and we continue to navigate with our long-term strategy,” Nair told industry publication Vogue Business. Revenues decreased 4.3 per cent to $US18.7bn in 2024 (on a comparable basis at constant currency).
Pavlovsky is similarly unafraid of slowing growth. Chanel – one of the few still privately held, family-owned luxury businesses – always thinks long term. It took six months to find its new artistic director of fashion following the abrupt departure of Virginie Viard in June last year.
Chanel appointed Matthieu Blazy, formerly creative director of Bottega Veneta, in December. Blazy will debut his first collection for the maison in October. For the right person, Pavlovsky was prepared to wait.
“That was the reason why we have decided with Matthieu to take one year … one year to give him time to be immersed in the brand and we’ll see him on the podium in October. It’s a super enthusiastic period starting for Chanel. (We are) so happy to be at the beginning of that.”
What matters, Pavlovsky says, is always staying true to Chanel. “Sometimes the business is flying, sometimes the business is more difficult. And we have to be ready to stay consistent with who you are in any condition. And that’s something which is super important.”
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