QATAR. In a major world first, Qatar Duty Free (QDF) this week hosted the inaugural Giorgio Armani airport fashion event.
Giorgio Armani women’s and men’s clothing, bags and accessories from the Autumn/Winter 2015/16 collection were showcased in front of VIP guests and passengers at Hamad International Airport (HIA).
The live fashion presentation on Thursday (1 October) featured six models walking a runway, starting in Qatar Duty Free’s Giorgio Armani boutique and extending out into the main passenger area.
The event was held twice, both in the afternoon and evening with live video steam of the event on the large Media Mesh screens (We’ll bring you video coverage of the event early next week), supported by an extensive social media platform (see below).
Giorgio Armani stylists and make-up artists travelled from Milan to offer passengers a personalised shopping experience, make-overs, styling tips and advice across the designer’s fashion and make up collection.
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Qatar Duty Free Senior Vice President Keith Hunter said: “We are delighted that our successful partnership with Giorgio Armani has enabled us to deliver this fantastic live fashion event in HIA, giving passengers a preview of Armani’s latest collection that is now available at the Giorgio Armani boutique located at QDF in the airport departure terminal.
“Last year Giorgio Armani selected Qatar Duty Free and HIA as the first airport in the Middle East to open a boutique. Today this exclusive fashion event further underlines Giorgio Armani’s commitment to the market and supports Qatar Duty Free in achieving its ongoing ambition to provide global travellers with luxury brands and exciting and memorable shopping experiences that go beyond regular retail expectations.”
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Consumer media and fashion bloggers from around the world attended, guaranteeing extensive global coverage. Instagram and social account links were created with images and short videos of the event
Social media included:
Instagram – https://instagram.com/qatardutyfree/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/QatarDutyFree?fref=ts
HIA Instagram – https://instagram.com/hiaqatar
HIA Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HIAQatar?fref=ts
Qatar Airways – https://twitter.com/qatarairways
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Giorgio Armani Worldwide Travel Retail Director Carla Guiducci (third from right) and Qatar Duty Free Senior Vice President Keith Hunter (fourth from right) join in the celebrations of a remarkable partnership) |
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COMMENT: This is what the Trinity of airports, retailers and brands can achieve when they collectively set out to utilise the majesty, spectacle and excitement that great modern airports offer, writes Martin Moodie.
In my opening remarks at last month’s Trinity Forum in Hong Kong, I noted: “The travel business is set in some of the world’s finest contemporary architecture in a world of suspended normality, of intense excitement that is the traveller’s psyche. They’re fantastic places, increasingly full of fantastic art, of real Sense of Place, and so the commercial offer has to find a way to be fantastic too, in variety, in exclusivity, in spectacle and in that most elusive quality of all value.”
The Qatar Duty Free, Hamad International Airport and Giorgio Armani tri-partite event ticks all those boxes and more. All three parties helped make it happen. Here is a highly selective, world-famous brand choosing for the first time an airport setting for a fashion show. That decision implies great brand trust in the retailer and the airport. It also, as Keith Hunter says, speaks volumes about the very real spirit of partnership that has been forged between retailer and brand.
I’ll say again what I said at Trinity – airports are extraordinary places, places of high emotion, of love, loss, delight and despair, cross-roads of humanity. For travel retail to retain – or, in fact, to increase – its relevance in a channel deeply vulnerable to the growth of e-commerce, it must do things that online rivals cannot do. And seeing a fashion show from a world-famous brand with your own traveller’s eyes is a fantastic example of exactly that.
