Chanel Takes Over Rinascente Store in Milan – WWD

MILAN — Officially kicking off the holiday season with one of the most expansive brand takeovers the department store has ever orchestrated, Rinascente is on track to hit the 1 billion euro sales mark this year, breaking the previous record.

The retailer’s jewel-in-the-crown location overlooking the Duomo cathedral in Milan unveiled Chanel Wonderland Thursday night, a takeover of the French maison that runs through Jan. 4.

“This move is the apotheosis of our strategy as a media company,” Rinascente chief executive officer Pierluigi Cocchini told WWD ahead of the inauguration.

“It’s interesting that a company like Chanel — one of the most evocative and reputable brands in the world — has decided to partner with Rinascente Duomo on a Christmas takeover, a very important moment for them,” the executive opined. “It means we also have a certain reputation and have proved ourselves in the past so much that we’re getting noticed. These takeovers have become frequent for us…as we see a strong interest from many brands on such activations,” he said.

To be sure, the Chanel Wonderland concept, one that stretches across floors, the department store’s windows, facade and arcade is the most expansive the retailer has ever staged, but follows in footsteps of other similar activations with a range of fashion and lifestyle labels, from Fendi, Prada and Loewe a year ago, also for the holiday season, to Swarovski x Skims, Boss, Maison Margiela and Farm Rio.

In addition to taking over the store windows, the building’s facade, enabled by the Twinkly mapping technology, is lit up with a golden Chanel light show filled with the brand’s signature emblems and spaced out by a projection of Rinascente’s Christmas mini-movie. Lightings in the shape of gift boxes and Chanel No.5 flacons are suspended from the ceiling of the window-adjacent arcade.

The Chanel Beauty universe takes over the store’s lower floor with a dedicated white and gold booth hosting an immersive pop-up boutique.

Replete with immersive tools — including the Air Parfum Discovery station, a fragrance diffuser for a blind selection of one’s most appropriate Chanel fragrance and the Chanel Try On virtual makeup station — the pop-up shop is decked in gold boasts makeup, skin care and fragrance corners. It offers special Chanel products, including collectors’ fragrances and coffrets, limited-edition refillable skin care treatments, as well as the holiday 2023 makeup collection.

Consultations with Chanel perfume and makeup experts are offered upon booking, while the Gift Generator app helps customers find the perfect Chanel present.

The pop-up boutique is flanked by the temporary Chanel Wonderland café, which takes over the permanent God Save the Food restaurant on Rinascente’s lower floor. Furnished like a Parian bistro with white and gold-edged tables and black midcentury chairs, the café offers a French-inspired menu.

According to Cocchini, Chanel Wonderland is a synecdoche, inspired from the signature No.5 fragrance in representation of the brand’s universe. “It’s a part for the whole of the brand but also of Christmas because it’s an accessible, iconic [product]. It’s inclusive and exclusive at the same time, in the best sense of the two words,” he said.

Other Chanel activations are scattered throughout the store, with a dedicated shoe corner on the third floor and an eyewear space at the Annex, in addition to the permanent Chanel Beauty corner on the ground floor.

“It’s been a synergy…we’re not just a box. It’s an immersive experience throughout,” Cocchini said. “We’re downtown in every city and have a natural audience as a result of our prime locations, but we also contributed with our reputation. We have a brand mix and have debuted takeover projects…we know how to welcome visitors, we’re not just a TV channel broadcasting a spot. We’ve built good shows around it. Chanel would have hardly agreed to such a takeover if the medium were not to be recognized and reputed. It suggests we’re on the right trajectory,” he offered.

The activation goes hand in hand with Rinascente’s ongoing holiday concept, dubbed Christmas Factory. The concept includes a partnership with Lemax, the Chinese company specialized in music boxes and miniatures, recreating enchanted Christmas villages with white slopes, moving trains and carousels. And there is also a partnership with artisans hailing from San Gregorio Armeno, a historic street in Naples known for ateliers specializing in handmade figurines of nativity scenes.

The Chanel takeover crowns a well-performing holiday season so far, which according to Cocchini starts in mid-October at Rinascente, when the retailer introduces some of its dedicated merchandise, in the food and home decor selections, until the full Christmas Factory razzmatazz bows just before Black Friday weekend.

“Black Friday is the first teaser of the Christmas shopping spree and it’s been great despite the external headwinds that are inevitable, from the economic crisis to geopolitical instability leading to reduced tourism flows, but we’ve experienced growth compared to 2022,” the CEO offered. “We’re doing better than the overall market from what I can tell. That’s also because we have developed several activities. There are stress [factors] and little inclination to shopping or entertainment, but if you commit to the right activities and prove propositional you get results,” he said.

Notably dependent on tourism, Cocchini said footfall in the city and at the department store has increased significantly versus 2019 albeit with a different geographic composition. The number of Chinese has been cut in half in the post-pandemic scene, Russians almost disappeared from the retail floor but were replaced by brisker traffic from European visitors, as well as a significant uptick tourists, from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. The executive also pointed to increased traffic from countries such as Brazil, South Korea, Japan and newcomers, including the Philippines.

With a network of nine stores in Italy and a double-digit increase in 2023 sales versus a year earlier, Rinascente “for the first time will hit the billion[-euro] mark,” Cocchini said. “We still don’t know the exact date but it’s going to be before Christmas. We’re happy and proud because we managed to achieve this target within a difficult context,” he said.

Other stores in the network also celebrate the holiday season with tailored, albeit smaller-scaled, activations. The Florence and Turin units host a Dior takeover, while Prada linked with Rinascente’s Roma Tritone unit, taking over for a few days also the store’s rooftop restaurant. The Roma Fiume, Catania, Palermo, Cagliari and Monza flagships will be dedicated to Rinascente’s Christmas Factory concept.

Asked about plans to keep enhancing the network in 2024, Cocchini said a lot has been done over the past two years, from revamping the Roma Fiume, Florence and Turin stores, to rearranging the Milano Duomo flagship’s second floor dedicated to menswear.

Up next is a reshuffle of Milan’s womenswear assortment, expanding its retail space and adjusting brand mix across the third, fourth and fifth floors so that it’s more readable by customers. The retailer also plans to continue tweaking its menswear offering in Milan and give new impulse to brand mix at its Roma Tritone store.