MILAN — Officially kicking off the vacation season with one of the expansive brand takeovers the department store has ever orchestrated, Rinascente is on target to hit the 1 billion euro sales mark this yr, 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 an organization like Chanel — one of the evocative and reputable brands on the planet — has decided to partner with Rinascente Duomo on a Christmas takeover, an important moment for them,” the chief opined. “It means we even have a certain fame and have proved ourselves up to now a lot that we’re getting noticed. These takeovers have grow to be frequent for us…as we see a robust interest from many brands on such activations,” he said.

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

Along with taking on the shop windows, the constructing’s facade, enabled by the Twinkly mapping technology, is lit up with a golden Chanel light show stuffed with the brand’s signature emblems and spaced out by a projection of Rinascente’s Christmas mini-movie. Lightings in the form 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 shop’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 collection 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, skincare and fragrance corners. It offers special Chanel products, including collectors’ fragrances and coffrets, limited-edition refillable skincare treatments, in addition to the vacation 2023 makeup collection.

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

The pop-up boutique is flanked by the temporary Chanel Wonderland café, which takes over the everlasting 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.

In accordance with Cocchini, Chanel Wonderland is a synecdoche, inspired from the signature No.5 fragrance in representation of the brand’s universe. “It’s a component for the entire of the brand but in addition of Christmas since it’s an accessible, iconic [product]. It’s inclusive and exclusive at the identical time, in the perfect sense of the 2 words,” he said.

Other Chanel activations are scattered throughout the shop, with a dedicated shoe corner on the third floor and an eyewear space on the Annex, along with the everlasting Chanel Beauty corner on the bottom floor.

“It’s been a synergy…we’re not only a box. It’s an immersive experience throughout,” Cocchini said. “We’re downtown in every city and have a natural audience in consequence of our prime locations, but we also contributed with our fame. Now we have a brand mix and have debuted takeover projects…we all know easy methods to welcome visitors, we’re not only 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 weren’t to be recognized and reputed. It suggests we’re on the proper trajectory,” he offered.

The activation goes hand in hand with Rinascente’s ongoing holiday concept, dubbed Christmas Factory. The concept features 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’s 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 thus far, which based on Cocchini starts in mid-October at Rinascente, when the retailer introduces a few of its dedicated merchandise, within the food and residential decor selections, until the total Christmas Factory razzmatazz bows just before Black Friday weekend.

“Black Friday is the primary teaser of the Christmas shopping spree and it’s been great despite the external headwinds which are inevitable, from the economic crisis to geopolitical instability resulting in reduced tourism flows, but we’ve experienced growth in comparison with 2022,” the CEO offered. “We’re doing higher than the general market from what I can tell. That’s also because we now have developed several activities. There are stress [factors] and little inclination to shopping or entertainment, but for those who commit to the proper activities and prove propositional you get results,” he said.

Notably depending on tourism, Cocchini said footfall in the town and on the department store has increased significantly versus 2019 albeit with a special geographic composition. The variety of Chinese has been cut in half within the post-pandemic scene, Russians almost disappeared from the retail floor but were replaced by brisker traffic from European visitors, in addition to a major uptick tourists, from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. The manager also pointed to increased traffic from countries reminiscent of 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 yr earlier, Rinascente “for the primary time will hit the billion[-euro] mark,” Cocchini said. “We still don’t know the precise date however it’s going to be before Christmas. We’re completely satisfied and proud because we managed to attain this goal inside a difficult context,” he said.

Other stores within the network also rejoice the vacation 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 on for a couple of days also the shop’s rooftop restaurant. The Roma Fiume, Catania, Palermo, Cagliari and Monza flagships shall be dedicated to Rinascente’s Christmas Factory concept.

Asked about plans to maintain enhancing the network in 2024, Cocchini said loads 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 in order that it’s more readable by customers. The retailer also plans to proceed tweaking its menswear offering in Milan and provides recent impulse to brand mix at its Roma Tritone store.