Rebirth of the Fashion King

After the official announcement, online discussions began to ferment.

Leon Lai's official announcement even made it to the top of Naver's trending search list, with "샤넬" (Chanel) at number one, "레온라이" (Leon Lai) at number two, and "레온라이샤넬" (Leon Lai Chanel) at number three. All three of them were related to the same event.

In a popular post on Naver's entertainment forum, a user posted a photo of Leon Lai at a concert in Seoul Olympic Park in 2002, with only one sentence in the caption:

"오빠가돌아왔다.샤넬을입고." (Brother is back, wearing Chanel.)

The post received over eight thousand comments within an hour.

"The man I fell in love with when I was sixteen, I'm thirty now, and he hasn't changed at all."

"He has that kind of elegance and nobility that all Korean male celebrities have tried to learn for decades but can't, it's in his bones."

"He's not just wearing Chanel, he *is* Chanel."

"In 1995, he came to South Korea to film GG. I took the train from Busan to Seoul alone and waited outside the filming location for six hours, only to catch a glimpse of him from afar."

Now he's standing in the shop window I pass on my way to work every day, wearing Chanel. That's life, I guess.

"How much self-discipline does it take to maintain this state in middle age?"

"Chanel finally realized one thing: a true luxury brand ambassador doesn't need to be young enough to be his son."

At the same time, the homepages of major Chinese portal websites such as Xinlang.com, Sohu.com, and NetEase.com were all updated.

Leon Lai appointed as Chanel's first male brand ambassador in Greater China

Chanel officially announced Leon Lai as its brand ambassador, making him the first Chinese male spokesperson in the brand's 100-year history.

Chanel chooses Leon Lai, ushering in a new era of male brand ambassadors for luxury brands.

The three reports have different focuses, but none of them use common entertainment industry terms such as "becoming popular," "rising to the top," or "getting endorsements."

All three media outlets used the same keyword – "first place".

Subsequently, Xinlang.com reprinted an analysis article from the Chinese version of WWD International Fashion News, a vertical media outlet in the fashion industry, titled "When Chanel Chooses Dawn: A Thorough Rethinking of Luxury Brands' Asian Endorsement Strategies".

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This article has garnered attention in both the financial and fashion circles.

The article's core argument is: "Over the past twelve years, luxury brands' endorsement strategy in the Asian market has been primarily based on female celebrities."

Female celebrities, social media data, and sales performance have become the sole criteria for selecting brand ambassadors in Asia.

This path dependence has led to a high degree of homogenization in the endorsement strategies of all brands, and the faces of all luxury brands in Asia are gradually converging.

Chanel's choice this time has shattered all three consensuses.

First, they chose men. While the entire industry was betting on female purchasing power, Chanel used the dawn to open up a new market for male luxury goods consumption in Asia.

Secondly, they chose maturity. At a time when brand ambassadors are generally in their early twenties, Chanel chose an artist over forty, proving one thing: the real high-net-worth consumer group is not young people in their twenties, but the middle-aged elite class who have grown up with the brand.

Third, Chanel chose national recognition over online traffic. The standard Chanel chose was not the number of social media followers or the popularity of trending topics, but rather a public image built over more than a decade of national awareness and zero risk of negative public opinion.

This is a rewriting of the rules of the Asian luxury goods industry.

At noon, the entertainment section of PTT, Taiwan's largest BBS forum, was flooded with posts.

Discussion thread title: "Leon Lai wears Chanel; the first of the Four Heavenly Kings to become an ambassador for a top luxury brand."

Top-rated comment:

"Among the Four Heavenly Kings, only he can carry Chanel. It's not that he's the most handsome or the most popular, but that his style and Chanel are on the same wavelength. If you see Andy Lau wearing Chanel, you'd think he's wearing a costume; if Aaron Kwok wears it, you'd think it's too trendy; if Jacky Cheung wears it—well, I can't imagine. But if Leon Lai wears it, you'd feel like the clothes belong to him."

"True point."

"This is the right way to be a luxury brand ambassador. It's not about how famous you are, it's about whether you look like someone who should wear the brand's clothes."

"If Li Ka-shing wore Chanel, he would probably look the same."

"Don't make random comparisons upstairs, but now I find this scene surprisingly natural."

Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao published an editorial-level commentary on its website at 2 p.m. with a restrained yet precise title: "Signals of a Shift in Luxury Brands' Asian Strategy: From Pursuing Traffic to Pursuing Value Recognition."

The article states:

"Chanel's choice of Leon Lai as its first male brand ambassador in Greater China, while seemingly a simple appointment, actually signals a period of profound adjustment for global luxury brands in the Asian market. Over the past decade, luxury brands' growth in Asia has primarily relied on the incremental benefits of emerging markets. However, since the 2008 global financial crisis, luxury brands have begun to re-evaluate their core consumer groups in Asia. High-net-worth, highly engaged, and high-spending mature consumers are replacing younger, high-traffic consumers as the core revenue driver for luxury brands."

Leon Lai's public image—zero negative publicity, timeless appeal, and consistently stable demeanor—perfectly aligns with this strategic shift.

On the same day, Yahoo! Japan's entertainment section listed this news as the day's top international entertainment headline.

Japanese netizens' commentary style is quite different from that of other parts of East Asia, and their perspectives are also more detailed.

"Chanel's men's ready-to-wear collection has always performed poorly in Japan, but if Leon Lai were to visit the Tokyo store, I might buy a tweed jacket, not because I'm a fan of his, but because he proved that tweed can be worn so effortlessly."

"The Japanese entertainment industry should study this case. Why is it that we've chosen so many young idols as spokespeople, yet none of them have achieved this kind of effect?"

"Leon Lai's temperament is very similar to that of Japanese male stars in the 1980s, like Ken Takakura. He doesn't need to smile or speak; just standing there tells a story."

"He is the best-dressed man in Asia, bar none. Now he's the face of Chanel, it's like fate brought this to this point, it was bound to happen a long time ago."

Chanel's Japanese marketing department held an emergency internal meeting that afternoon to discuss whether to increase the proportion of Leon Lai's posters in the window display of the Ginza flagship store.

The original plan was to synchronize the visual identity globally, but after seeing the data from South Korea and Hong Kong, the Japanese operations team decided to replace all the main street-facing windows of the Ginza flagship store with Leon Lai's official announcement posters.

The Ginza flagship store is Chanel's largest store in Asia. Located at the intersection of Ginza Chuo-dori and Harumi-dori, it has six floors and its street-facing windows are recognized by the Japanese luxury goods industry as the "strongest display position".

The use of Dawn's visual theme here signifies Chanel Japan's highest level of recognition for this brand ambassador.

……

Paris.

Meeting room on the third floor of No. 31 Cambon Street.

Pavlovsky's phone rang again. He glanced down at it and handed it to Karl Lagerfeld, who was sitting opposite him.

Karl Lagerfeld took the phone; the screen displayed a short message from the president of Chanel Asia Pacific:

(Our Hong Kong stores are running out of stock, our Seoul store windows were shattered by the crowds, Tokyo has ordered all street-facing store windows to be replaced with Leon Lai's signature visuals, and our flagship store in Beijing saw a 500% surge in foot traffic within three hours. We've never seen anything like this before.)

Karl Lagerfeld returned the phone to Pavlovsky and took off his sunglasses.

The meeting room was quiet for a moment.

Virginie Viard spoke first.

"Rhine".

Li Xun turned to look at her.

"How did you come up with that idea?" Viard asked. "I mean, so many brands, so many years, and no one thought of choosing Leon Lai. He's right there, everyone can see him, but no one associated him with being a luxury brand ambassador. Why did you think of that?"

Li Xun closed the report in front of him.

"Because everyone is asking who's the most popular, nobody's asking who looks the most like them," Li Xun said with a smile.

To be honest, if he were working at YSL today, he would recommend Leon Lai to YSL as well.

This guy's fans are of such high quality. The way Zhou Huimin and Nakamori look at him is practically electrifying.

Karl Lagerfeld looked at him, a professional affirmation in his blue eyes that was more than just approval.

"Go on," the Empress Dowager said.

Luxury goods are not fast-moving consumer goods, and brand ambassadors are not recipients of short-term traffic, but rather long-term carriers of the brand's spirit.

If the selection of brand ambassadors is treated as a short-term promotional activity, it will fall into a vicious cycle—traffic comes and goes, and once it leaves, new traffic has to be found, which becomes more and more expensive and the conversion rate becomes lower and lower.

"But if you choose someone with high public consensus and a stable personal style, the brand won't need to redefine who it is every time," Li Xun said with a smile.

Pavlovsky asked in bewilderment, "Why wasn't LEON LAI chosen by other luxury brands before?"

"Because many people overlook a variable," Li Xun explained.

"The main force of luxury consumption in Asia is not people in their twenties, but people in their thirties to forty-fives. People in this age group have formed their aesthetic sense in the 1990s, which was the golden age of dawn."

To them, Leon Lai was not just a star; he was the embodiment of all the beautiful fantasies they had during their youth.

Twenty years later, a luxury brand tells him, "The person you loved most in your youth is now wearing our clothes. Imagine the psychological impact."

"You're talking about female consumers," Pavlovsky said.

"Yes, women are the existing core population." Li Xun nodded.

"But what about men? What is the biggest obstacle to men's luxury consumption? It's social pressure. When a man walks into a luxury brand store, he may be afraid of being seen as a vain, showy person who needs to rely on the logo to prove himself."

But if the brand ambassador he sees is someone who doesn't need any brand endorsement to be influential, someone recognized throughout Asia for their taste, experience, and influence, then the brand is helping him accomplish something—he's not buying a logo; he's becoming a better version of himself.

No one spoke in the meeting room.

Li Xun continued speaking.

"Women can wear Chanel clothes, and men can wear them too, but only if the man wearing them is confident enough in his sexuality."

Leon Lai is exactly that kind of person. He transformed Chanel's clothing into elite menswear, and he could help Chanel accomplish something the brand had always wanted to do but hadn't been able to: establish the category mindshare of men's ready-to-wear.

Virginie Viard took a deep breath.

Karl Lagerfeld put his sunglasses back on and stood up.

He walked up to Li Xun without stopping, but patted Li Xun's shoulder with his right hand as he passed by.

"Once the trouble with that fur supplier on Rue de Montigne is resolved, come to my office." The old man opened the conference room door.

After Karl Lagerfeld left, Pavlovsky glanced down at the data on his phone, then at Li Xun.

"The data from Shanghai has been updated. There are now over two hundred people queuing outside the flagship store. On the day a brand ambassador is officially announced, a store can transform from a boutique to a place where people queue up to buy. Rhine, do you know what this means in the luxury goods industry?"

"It means that the missing connection between the brand and consumers has been found," Li Xun said happily.

"No," Pavlovsky shook his head.

"This means that you have changed the way we've selected ambassadors over the past fifteen years."

……

The industry typically uses an important metric to measure the first-day effect of a brand ambassador – the store's customer traffic conversion rate on that day.

Chanel's performance on the day of the official announcement was more than three times the industry average, and the performance of the men's category has exceeded all comparable historical data.

Chanel's Paris headquarters sent an internal email to all employees at 10:30 p.m. that evening.

The sender was Karl Lagerfeld and Bruno Pavlovski, and the recipients were all heads of Chanel's global departments and regional presidents.

Full text of the email:

"Today, the Paris headquarters and Chanel Asia Pacific headquarters announced that Leon Lai has been appointed as the brand ambassador for Greater China, which exceeded all expectations."

The Asia Pacific report indicates that men's product sales have increased by an average of 6,100 percent per day over the past twelve months.

The main entrance of the Seoul flagship store suffered structural damage due to unprecedented visitor traffic.

The stock of men's tweed jackets in Hong Kong ran out within three hours.

The flagship store in Shanghai saw a 500% increase in customer traffic.

Tokyo has requested a complete overhaul of the visual identity of its street-facing shop windows.

This was not a marketing success; it was a strategic validation.

The decision to choose Mr. Leon Lai stemmed from a clear understanding that luxury brands' brand ambassador strategy in Asia goes beyond short-term celebrity endorsement models.

Today's results confirm that our future lies in collaborating with those who embody enduring values ​​rather than fleeting popularity.

This appointment was proposed by Mr. Rhine Li.

Our global creative team will now begin to re-examine our brand ambassador selection framework across all regions, incorporating the principles presented today.

This was the first time Li Xun's name appeared in a global email jointly signed by Karl Lagerfeld and the president of Chanel's fashion division.