Chanel blends education, engagement in beauty studio

February 2, 2018

Chanel's beauty school will teach consumers application techniques. Image credit: Chanel

French fashion house Chanel is opening up a beauty school at London department store Harrods to provide expert perspectives on its products.

Opened Jan. 27, the Chanel London Studio x Harrods is offers customers the chance to interact with the brand’s makeup artists to learn tips and tricks. As consumers become more centered on acquiring experiences, brands are meeting the demand with new opportunities for engagement.

Beauty school

This Harrods space marks the first time Chanel has hosted a beauty school. Located on the retailer’s fifth floor, the studio will host paid workshops and masterclasses.

For instance, the three-hour Chanel Essentials class focuses on teaching techniques for application with professional brushes. Along with information, consumers will walk away from the session with three brushes.

Other workshops offer two-hour dives into lip application or eye makeup. Another class delves into complexion perfecting makeup, teaching students how to apply base and achieve different finishes.

Another two-hour course teaches participants how to recreate runway beauty looks at home.

For those who want a more natural look, one of the classes focuses on non-overt beauty, playing into the #IWokeUpLikeThis trend.

Chanel's spring/summer 2018 beauty collection. Image credit: Chanel

The workshops range in price from 30 pounds to 120 pounds, or about $43 to $171 at current exchange. This offers a wide range of consumers to participate.

Consumers can book classes online for themselves as well as any guests they wish to go with.

Like many other beauty brands, Chanel has previously worked to make its beauty techniques more accessible through social video tutorials. However, having this in-person interaction allows consumers to get a firsthand lesson in techniques.

Luxury lessons
Workshops are becoming a popular platform for beauty brand engagement, appealing to consumers’ desires to ramp up their skills and knowledge.

Clique’s millennial beauty platform Byrdie is leveraging its beauty expertise for a holiday pop-up experience in partnership with Nordstrom.

For two weeks, the Byrdie Beauty Lab will invite shoppers to explore the publication’s product picks in a shoppable "beauty playground," with a corresponding edit retailing on Nordstrom’s ecommerce site. Reflective of the changing media environment, Clique has worked to take its brands beyond editorial, leveraging their existing communities and perspectives for collaborations (see story).

While this is Chanel’s first time hosting a branded beauty school, Harrods has previously taken the educational concept to its cosmetic department.

Taught by makeup artists from brands, the event series offered consumers once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to partake in one-on-one workshops in Harrods’ The Color Hall (see story).

Luxury brands should expand beyond experiential marketing for goods to focus on curating branded experiences, says the president of Vice's Fashion and Luxury Group.

Whereas consumers formerly used hard luxury goods to communicate status or identity, today’s status symbols are tied increasingly to experiences, as shoppers use social media to broadcast a sense of belonging. During the “How Luxury Brands Should Future Proof” keynote at Luxury FirstLook 2018: Exclusivity Redefined on Jan. 17, the executive noted that brands can fulfill consumers’ desires for esteem or identity (see story).

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