2023 has been the year of “world tours” for luxury brands, with immersive world-building experiences becoming the new norm for launching a campaign. The world tour trend was especially fitting for summer, with the likes of Dior with their global Dioriviera campaign bringing the atmosphere of the French Riviera to select locations around the world and Jacquemus transporting its Fall 2023 show’s guests via rowing boat to the Palace of Versailles where they watched the show from the water. German fine goods house Montblanc is not exempt from the trend, running across summer past its global Library Spirit campaign.
The Library Spirit: Episodes from around The World centres Montblanc’s roots in the culture of writing, an immersive touring exhibit which spotlights the library as a transformative space which acts as a window into the soul of it host city, where storytelling and the written word become powerful tools for self discovery and expression. After previous stops at international cultural hubs of the western world such as London, Milan and Paris, the campaign crossed over into Asia just last week on its latest stop in the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai.
Stories Untold
“Our campaign journey has taken us around the world because while the power of words is universal, every city has its own influences expressed in its libraries”, explains Montblanc Creative Director Marco Tomasetta regarding the literary space as a model for the cultural-historical. The literary space is perhaps especially poignant for the Chinese who have only in recent history been able to move on from the mass persecution of writers and artists during China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s throughout the 1970s, bringing forth into the first quarter of the 21st century a new generation of Chinese literary voices now empowered to tell their own stories.
Montblanc brought to life the Chinese library through an outdoor installation of cascading books suspended in air at the historic Sunke Villa, with walls made out of traditional Chinese texts, live calligraphy as well as musical performances by up and coming Chinese artists, contemporary and classical both. The exhibit was personally launched in tandem with Montblanc’s Extreme 3.0 collection by Montblanc CEO Nicolas Baretzki and Montblanc Artistic Director Marco Tomasetta, joined by brand ambassadors and friends of the house.
New Offerings to Usher in Fall
The Extreme 3.0 collection has been outfitted in a reimagined archive print inspired by the motifs created by Grete Gross, Montblanc’s Head of Advertising who deeply influenced the House’s visual language in the 1920’s, drawing heavily on the Bauhaus style of the time. The result is a collection of refreshed elegance, both timeless and versatile. “The thing I liked was recreating a continuity between these symbols,” says Tomasetta. “As if the fountain pen had left its mark on the leather.”
Of note might be the original “M Lock 4810” buckles reminiscent redeveloped in transparent Plexiglas. The exposed internal mechanisms inspired by those used in climbing contain both a refined form and purposeful function. The new vibrant aquamarine “Fern Blue” further elevates the collection, adding a fun twist on these already versatile everyday pieces. Be it for work, sport or travel, the Extreme 3.0 collection promises to add just that extra bit of finesse to your daily journaling or deep focus tasks, presented wonderfully through the transformative space of The Library Spirit. More information on the campaign and the Extreme 3.0 collection can be found here.
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