Luxury brands from Harry Winston to Loewe are going all out with Lunar New Year collections in a bid to attract Chinese customers.
Ahead of the Year of the Horse, which begins Tuesday, Harry Winston unveiled a limited-edition rose gold watch, worth $81,500, with diamond bezels and a red lacquer horse. High-end fashion brand Chloé has launched a capsule collection, ranging from $250 silk scarves to a $5,300 snakeskin and leather shoulder bag with a pony head and tail connected by a horsebit chain. Many other brands, including Loewe, Gucci and Loro Piana, have introduced new bag charms with horse motifs.
The Year of the Horse comes at a time of cautious optimism for designer brands and could mark the start of a comeback for China’s luxury market.
Chinese consumers were once the main driver of the global luxury sector, but they have declined sharply in recent years, weighed down by the country’s slowing economy and falling property values.
China’s luxury market was worth about RMB 350 billion in 2024, or about $50 billion, according to Bain estimates. While the consultancy estimates the market will contract by 3% to 5% in 2025, Bain analysts noted that the sector began to show signs of recovery in the second half of 2025 thanks to better stock performance and consumer confidence.
Loewe celebrated the Year of the Horse by installing a storefront in Shanghai, China.
Ying Tang/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Luca Solca, senior analyst at Bernstein, said he predicts Chinese spending on luxury goods will stabilize, forecasting mid-single-digit percentage growth in 2026. However, the market is still much more competitive than at its peak, he said.
Before the Covid pandemic, Chinese consumers accounted for around a third of the global luxury goods market, according to Solca. That percentage has since fallen to about 23 percent, he said.
The fortunes of the luxury market not only rest on the Lunar New Year, but it is also an opportunity for Western brands to show their respect for Chinese culture, he said.
The annual festival is associated with the colors red and gold, which symbolize luck and fortune in Chinese culture. Each Lunar New Year is represented by one of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. Last year’s animal was the snake.
But Solca said that to best capture the Chinese luxury consumer, brands need to go beyond expected motives.
“The Chinese are no longer impressed by anything that comes from the West,” Solca said. “A superficial interpretation of the CNY will not get you far.”
Véronique Yang, who heads BCG’s consumer services in Greater China, said literal interpretations can appear lazy, or even disrespectful, to Chinese consumers. Younger shoppers are also looking for fresher produce, she said.
“Young Chinese people respect ancient Chinese culture, but to be honest, they don’t understand many parts of it, or they want it reinterpreted in a modern way,” she said. “It is important to weave a narrative that connects heritage with a contemporary vision.”
Lunar New Year collections date back to the early 2010s, when Western brands were eager to tap into China’s rapidly growing luxury consumer market, according to Daniel Langer, a professor of luxury strategy at Pepperdine University. At the time, newly wealthy Chinese consumers were eager to spend on branded goods, especially when traveling abroad, he said, because there were few luxury boutiques in China outside of major cities like Shanghai and Beijing.
Now, with wider access and more choice, brands need to work harder to attract new customers.
And in the 12 years since the last Year of the Horse, China’s high-income consumers have become more demanding, Langer said.
“They have visited the best places in the world. They have dined in the best restaurants in the world. They have shopped in the best stores in the world. Their expectations of brands are significantly higher,” he said. “China has completely changed from a country with pent-up demand for luxury goods to a country of the highest sophistication.”
Lunar New Year products from Burberry.
Courtesy of Burberry
They’ve also gotten used to spending less on Western brands between pandemic travel restrictions and the rise of high-end domestic brands, according to Langer.
Before the pandemic, Chinese consumers made most of their luxury purchases overseas. Pandemic-related travel restrictions have definitely changed this dynamic. According to Bain, two-thirds of Chinese spending on luxury goods was made overseas in 2019. Last year, overseas spending accounted for only a third.
The Year of the Horse provides a natural opportunity for a significant number of Western brands to connect with this holiday. Langer said he prefers brands that take a less literal approach, like Loewe, which adorned its signature Puzzle bags with fringe and pom-poms for a cowboy aesthetic.
Yang noted, however, that the zodiac animal of the year is a symbol of luck only for people born that year, making it risky to play too much with horse imagery.
Instead, she said, brands can use immersive experiences to connect more authentically with Chinese customers, especially younger ones.
Valentino, for example, held a three-day lantern festival in January at Tianhou Palace, a historic temple along Shanghai’s Suzhou Creek. Burberry launched a massive Lunar New Year campaign in mid-December, complete with Chinese brand ambassadors, a pop-up store and an ice rink in Beijing.
“There are a lot of different cultural elements that you can integrate and build a narrative around,” Yang said. “It’s not just about animals.”