Maison Louis Vuitton, the French luxury brand, held its debut Voyager show to release its women's pre-fall 2024 collection at Shanghai's Long Museum West Bund to a combined audience of stars, fashion media and VIP customers on Thursday.

The show sees Nicolas Ghesquière, Louis Vuitton's Artistic Director of Women's Collections pursue an exploration that caps ten years of creativity with the brand. The event also reveals a vibrant collaboration with Chinese artist Sun Yitian. Known for her paintings of toys and other mass-produced objects, she creates an exclusive series that colorfully animates the collection, spanning ready-to-wear, leather goods, trunks, accessories and fragrances.

Throughout Sun's work, she explores the relationship between "Made in China" mass production and artistic value, bringing items that may initially seem unremarkable or of little value into the context of galleries and museums.

For her first collaboration with a luxury Maison, she imagined toy-like animals including a pink rabbit, yellow duck, spotted dog, leopard, zebra, penguin and swan. They interact playfully with iconic and everyday pieces as the latest collectible series in which contemporary artists bring their distinct world to the universe of Louis Vuitton.

Cate Blanchett, Hoyeon Jung, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Chloë Grace Moretz, Amber Liu, Jackson Wang, Chinese actresses Ouyang Nana, Zhou Dongyu and Du Juan sat in the front row with media from all over the world.

The show also celebrates Ghesquiere's 10th anniversary with Louis Vuitton. In tune with the brand's "spirit of travel" ethos, Ghesquiere initiated destination shows for the cruise season, staging the first in 2014 at the Place du Palais in Monaco.

Last December the company renamed the destination shows as "Louis Vuitton Voyager Shows". The Voyager shows signify an embracing of the brand's spirit of travel to showcase off-season collections in exceptional and inspiring locations around the world. A story of discovery and voyage, each stop sees local settings and cultural exchanges develop a unique foundation for the respective collection.

Shanghai was chosen to be the first destination. The Long Museum West Bund designed by Chinese architect Liu Yichun is characterized by a unique concrete "umbrella-vaulted" structure divided into four floors. It used to be a coal dock at Beipiao Port. The architecture creates a rational and tranquil sense of industry and primitivism as well as a sharp contrast between power and lightness.

China has been a particular focus in recent years for Louis Vuitton fashion events. In August 2020, just after the COVID pandemic, the company brought an outdoor men's show at the same place. The next year, a women's show was staged along the Huangpu River in Shanghai. In 2022, a "spin-off" men's show was given at Aranya Golden Beach in Beidaihe, North China's Hebei province and last November, Louis Vuitton presented Pharrell Williams' first pre-fall collection in Hong Kong.

The debut voyager show for the women's prefall 2024 collection marks the next chapter in a strong, longstanding relationship between the brand and China, dating back to the opening of its first China store at the Peninsula Hotel, Beijing, in 1992.

To attract more young Chinese people, the luxury Maison presented a resee live-streaming on China's popular social media platform Red, Xiaohongshu, achieving 470,000 visitors, setting a record for the luxury vertical on the platform.

They are also launching a pop-up store on Red for the first time and realized "see now buy now" through June 30.

The offline resee events will also take place in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Qingdao through to May 17.