Longchamp has appointed Yue Opera star Lijun Chen as its brand ambassador in China, a choice that signals the French leather goods house’s strategy of engaging Chinese consumers through cultural heritage rather than conventional celebrity endorsements.
For Longchamp, the Chinese market remains a growth priority amid a broader luxury sector recalibration. The brand has been investing in localized marketing and retail expansion across Chinese cities, betting that culturally fluent ambassador choices will generate deeper consumer engagement than standardized global campaigns.
The ambassadorship extends Longchamp’s pattern of selecting Chinese ambassadors from outside the standard luxury fashion circles. Previous appointments have included actors and artists with specific cultural resonance, a strategy that differentiates the house from peers who tend to rotate through the same cohort of global Chinese brand ambassadors.
Chen’s first campaign for the house features the Le Pliage and Roseau bags in settings that reference Chinese garden architecture and opera-stage geometry, creating visual connections between Longchamp’s French craft tradition and Chen’s Chinese performance heritage. The campaign will roll out across digital and retail channels in mainland China through the summer season.
Chen, a Yue Opera performer who has crossed into mainstream film and television, represents a rare combination of traditional performing arts prestige and contemporary celebrity reach. Her dual career—rooted in one of China’s oldest opera forms while commanding a significant digital following—aligns with Longchamp’s positioning as a heritage French house with everyday accessibility.
