Luxury in Asia

The newest skin care in collaboration with renowned manga artist and beauty expert Moyoco Anno, shu uemura introduces playful new packaging. Inspired by “Kamons” which are Japanese family emblems, Anime artist/fashion writer/beauty guru Moyoco Anno designed each product’s packaging to depict representations of playfully sophisticated and modern Kamon Girls characters influenced by the color of the cleansing oils.

Tokyo Kamon Girls

Tokyo Kamon Girls

Tokyo Kamon Girls

The cleansing oil line feature five different formulations…

The High Performance Cleansing Oil Classic is the original cleansing oil by Shu Uemura. The bottle is designed with leaves and vines and a Tokyo Kamon girl named Tsuruha.

The High Performance Balancing Cleansing Oil Enriched is for skin that is dry and dehydrated. The bottle is an eye catching orange check pattern and adorned with a Tokyo Kamon girl named Tamaki.

The High Performance Cleansing Oil Fresh is a light cleansing oil that will leave skin looking and feeling refreshed. The bottle is girly pink with chrysanthemums and a sweet Tokyo Kamon girl named Sakurako.

The Brightening Cleansing Oil will leave skin even-toned, translucent and smoother. The bottle is designed with purple and green colour with a coquettish Tokyo Kamon girl named Katsura.

The Limited Edition Cleansing Beauty Oil Premium A/O is a best seller. It’s has anti-aging and anti-oxidant properties to thoroughly cleans and purify the skin. The artwork on the bottle is of an elegant Tokyo Kamon girl named Matsuno on a green background with red pine trees.

Shu uemura Limited Edition Tokyo Kamon Girls Cleansing Oils are available from the Shu Uemura website while supplies last. / Shu Uemura

Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Henry Tang, at the opening ceremony of “Louis Vuitton: A Passion for Creation” exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of Art said, “During my visit to Paris last year, we reached an agreement with LVMH to bring the “Louis Vuitton: A Passion for Creation” Exhibition to Hong Kong. I am delighted to be here tonight for the opening ceremony.”

“I encourage everyone to take advantage of the golden opportunity to see this spectacular collection of modern art by world-renowned designers, architects and artists. At the same time, works from several local artists will also be on display,” he added.

Symbol of elegance and exquisite French lifestyle, Louis Vuitton has maintained close links with the arts for more than a century and a half. Founded during the industrial era, Louis Vuitton has always been in step with its time, working with the best engineers, decorators and creators. Inventor of the art of travel, the man Louis Vuitton and his successors have forged a strong relationship between traditional know how and present day design.

The arrival of Marc Jacobs and artistic director in 1997 reinforced and underlined the link with artists. Exemplary collaboration with Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince has marked the history of the relationship between art and commerce. In Hong Kong, the Louis Vuitton and Art exhibition brings this exciting story to life, analysing the unique creative process through installations, where works of art and archive documents are brought together.

The Collection, a Choice
This exhibition of a selection of works from the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création brings together a small number of significant large-scale works (paintings, photographs, video installations) by European, American and Chinese artists. These reflect an urban and energetic culture, leading to fictional landscapes, somewhere between dream and adventure.

Artists include: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paul Chan, Cao-Fei, Yang Fudong, Gilbert & George, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Andreas Gursky, Pierre Huyghe, Jeff Koons, Bertrand Lavier, Christian Marclay, Richard Prince.

Works by recognised and newly-discovered international artists working in the medium of video will be shown : Bas Jan Ader (Netherlands), Kader Attia, Cyprien Gaillard, Ange Leccia, Philippe Parreno (France), Olga Chernysheva (Russia), David Claerbout (Belgium), Trisha Donnelly, Ryan Trecartin (USA), Steve Mc Queen (Great Britain), Anri Sala (Albania), Zhou Tao (China), Rosemarie Trockel (Germany) among others.

In a developing open-minded spirit, the Foundation was eager to invite ‘emerging’ Hong Kong artists to take part in this exhibition with the help of a young art critic and curator who lives in China. / From Hong Kong Museum of Art

SHANGHAI (AFP) — Foreign luxury brands looking to win in China need to reach into cities that are barely known to the rest of the world but are home to startling and fast-growing wealth, a series of studies shows.

The majority of China’s rich now live outside of the mega-cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, said a study published 16th April by the Hurun Report.

About 825,000 people in China have net personal wealth of more than 10 million yuan (1.47 million dollars), according to the magazine, which tracks China’s wealthiest. But about 52 percent live outside the three biggest traditional centres for wealth — Beijing, Shanghai and southern Guangdong province, which includes Guangzhou and Shenzhen. “People are always shocked when they go to the sticks — to the secondary, the third tier cities — and they realise ‘My goodness these places are booming like nobody’s business’,” Hurun’s publisher Rupert Hoogewerf said. “We’re seeing very clearly there’s a trend of the luxury brands moving into the secondary cities.”

Management consultants McKinsey also warned in a separate report published this month of the dangers companies face in focusing on Beijing and Shanghai while underestimating the importance of China’s smaller cities. “In Beijing, the biggest brand names often have several retail outlets, but many go unrepresented in Chengdu or Wenzhou, even though Chengdu has more wealthy households than Detroit, and Wenzhou as many as Atlanta,” McKinsey said.

The southwestern city of Chengdu, with a population of 10 million, and eastern Wenzhou, with 7.9 million residents, are only two examples of dozens of fast-developing cities with populations of more than five million. The number of households with annual incomes of more than 250,000 yuan (36,765 dollars) hit 1.6 million last year and is expected to rise to more than four million by 2015, McKinsey said. Three quarters of the growth in China’s wealthy consumer segment will come from people who currently live outside Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, McKinsey said.

Another recent wealth study by China Merchants Bank and consultants Bain and Company reported similar findings. More than 20,000 people who held more than 10 million yuan each in private equity were in the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang alone, it said. Bain’s banking study said 320,000 people across China would have more than 100,000 yuan in investable assets by the end of this year, representing a pool of nine trillion yuan in assets.

Meanwhile, consumer confidence remains unusually high among the country’s rich, with 80 percent of Chinese millionaires saying the economic crisis had not hurt their lifestyle, Hurun said, citing 67 interviews done in February.

Copyright © 2009 AFP.

China’s Rich and Super-Rich Broken down by Region

* Excludes Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao
** Source: 2007 National Bureau of Statistics

Interesting study released by Trendsbüro about luxury and consumer groups in China.

Not every part of the globe is feeling the recession. CNN’s Kyung Lah reports.