What Vogue Hong Kong’s launch says about Asian fashion media

The Hong Kong edition of the fashion title enters an important luxury market where print still carries weight with luxury consumers.
Vogue Hong Kong launch cover.
Vogue Hong Kong launch cover.Nick Knight/Vogue Hong Kong

Key takeaways:

  • Print advertising is still relatively healthy in Hong Kong, even though digital revenue has overtaken traditional forms of media marketing. PwC expects traditional advertising revenue to continue growing through 2022.
  • Hong Kong has the highest per capita luxury spend of any Asian market. According to a report from Ruder Finn and Consumer Search Group, luxury shoppers in the Chinese territory say that magazine editorial and advertisements are more influential than recommendations from social media.
  • Vogue Hong Kong, which is the third Chinese language version of the fashion magazine, is positioned as more editorially edgy than its Mainland China and Taiwanese counterparts. With a bilingual website, it is also targeting English-speaking fashion lovers from across the region.

Vogue Hong Kong hit newsstands on 3 March, giving one of the world’s style capitals its own fashion bible.

Published under licence from Condé Nast International, Vogue Hong Kong is entering a relatively healthy market for print advertising. Brands invested $1.2 billion in print in 2017 and PwC expects spending on traditional advertisements to continue growing through 2022, says Cecilia Yau, the consultancy’s Hong Kong entertainment and media leader.

That is especially true for luxury fashion titles. Per a joint report by Ruder Finn and Consumer Search Group, 39 per cent of Hong Kongers said that advertisements in magazines and newspapers influenced their luxury purchase decisions, making print media more effective than social media.

While retail and economic growth in Hong Kong has slowed amid a US-China trade war, the city remains home to many affluent luxury shoppers and a popular destination for wealthy Chinese tourists. It is also Asia’s most important market for high-end goods, with a per capita luxury spend of $1,576 in 2017, Euromonitor data show.

Against this backdrop is a debut Vogue Hong Kong that weighs in at a hefty 350-plus pages, roughly 40 per cent of which is advertising. Its cover features Gigi Hadid and Fei Fei Sun, two sought-after stars shot by Nick Knight. The print edition will circulate about 35,000 copies.

Publisher Desiree Au says that Vogue Hong Kong is uniquely positioned to benefit. Advertisers who are keen to use Vogue as a conduit to recruit models and artists for campaigns have already reached out. “We have a good network of photographers, video makers and marketers that we can put together for brands,” she says. “That’s the wave of the future for media.”

More luxury shoppers in Hong Kong are influenced by magazine editorial and advertisements than commercials on social media.

A third Chinese Vogue

Vogue Hong Kong, which is written in Traditional Chinese, will attempt to replicate the commercial success of Vogue China, which has a readership of 2 million and publishes in Simplified Chinese.

Au says there’s plenty of space for a third Chinese-language Vogue. (A Taiwanese version is produced in Traditional Chinese.) “Hong Kong has a unique sense of style and culture. We’re producing something in a similar language, but in a different dialect. The cultural references and the way we use descriptions is different.”

Vogue Hong Kong is more high-voltage, edgier and younger” than its sister titles in the region, says Karina Dobrotvorskaya, executive director of editorial development at Condé Nast International (which owns Vogue Business). “We want all Vogues to be different and push them to be personal.”

Chinese and Taiwanese Vogue both have large domestic audiences, but Vogue Hong Kong is also positioned for fashion-forward Asians outside the territory’s Cantonese-speaking population of about 7.4 million. Its fashion director is Russian stylist Anya Ziourova, known for her international outlook and mixing brands from different price points.

While Chinese Vogue has a following of about 9.4 million on Weibo, Hong Kong Vogue has no presence on the Chinese internet. Instead, it is focusing its digital efforts on platforms like Instagram, where it ran teasers and even an ad for skincare brand La Prairie before launch.

The newest Vogue is entering a mature market, where competitors like Elle and Harper’s Bazaar have been published for decades. The Hearst titles are produced locally by the magazines division of Alibaba-owned South China Morning Post Publishers (SCMP).

But there is a sense that local fashion media has become too comfortable. “They are both quite traditional,” says Jessie Au, a senior lecturer at the Hong Kong Design Institute who specialises in fashion marketing. “We need a bit of energy injected.”

Vogue Hong Kong’s commitment to working with top creative talent like Knight gives it an edge over local competitors who, Dobrotvorskaya says, are too reliant on generic, syndicated content. “If we stop working with big photographers, it stops being Vogue,” she says.

SCMP didn’t return a request for comment.

Hong Kong’s lack of a core of homegrown designers means Vogue will take a geographically expansive approach to reporting on local fashion. That translates into covering Simone Rocha, whose father was born in the territory, and the Hong Kong-born, London-based Woolmark Prize winner Robert Wun.

“If we limit geographically that makes us very provincial,” says Au. “We are an intrinsic part of Asia — that’s what makes Hong Kong special.”

That perhaps explains the magazine’s choice of Hadid, who has been accused of racism toward Asians, for its cover. The pick stirred controversy on social media and Hong Kong Vogue pulled the US model’s solo cover from its Instagram page. Social media posters also wondered why the magazine used a Western team to shoot and style its debut cover.

Au didn’t respond to a request for comment. Condé Nast International had no comment.

Hong Kong Vogue wants to capitalise on the city’s cosmopolitanism with a bilingual website curated for an English-speaking Asian audience. The plan is to tap on the popularity of certain designers and Korean pop stars who have sizeable followings across the region.

“It’s also for those in Singapore, Malaysia or the Philippines who don’t have a Vogue yet,” Au says of the three English-speaking neighbouring countries with sizeable English-speaking populations. “There’s more relevance than a Vogue from the US or the UK. Asian people want their own things.”

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