Q&a / Rihanna, LeBron James, Roger Federer and Patti Smith all lead Rimowa’s Never Still campaign – CEO Hugues Bonnet-Masimbert tells us how it happened
- NBA and Space Jam star LeBron James, iconic musicians Rihanna and Patti Smith and tennis champ Roger Federer are united in Rimowa’s aspirational new brand video
- Bonnet-Masimbert became CEO in January when LVMH heir Alexandre Arnault moved to Tiffany & Co. – here he talks the business of travel and post-pandemic recovery
As Rimowa today launches a star-studded new campaign fronted by divergent contemporary icons Lebron James, Rihanna, Roger Federer and Patti Smith, STYLE spoke exclusively to the brand’s CEO, luxury veteran Hugues Bonnet-Masimbert, about how the luggage business will recover from the pandemic and its effects on travel.
Tell us more about the new Never Still campaign?
The key phrase for this campaign I would extract from one of Patti Smith’s poems: “We are ready”.
At Rimowa, we took the opportunity in this crisis to reflect on travel which is the essence of our activity – while preparing for the Never Still campaign.
The point of the campaign is to engage with travellers globally: we chose to work with four historical friends of the brand who are intensive travellers, who have been using Rimowa for years and even decades. They were asking themselves, “I’ve been a traveller for many years, what if this is about to change? What is changing?”
I know when travel resumes – and it will – I will have a different take on travel, so that’s really the conversation we are trying to have with our clients in this new campaign.
I was working side by side with Alexandre Arnault for the best part of the last four years and so it’s not like there was any place for a gap in our visions. We’ve been working together – and by the way Alexandre remains the chairman of Rimowa, meaning that even though he’s obviously nowadays extremely engaged and busy with his new professional journey, we catch up very frequently because he wants to stay in touch with what’s happening in the brand.
Will Rimowa’s old vision continue under your leadership?
I would say the vision that we’ve had at Rimowa will continue. What has changed is the world. I guess going back to the Never Still campaign, that’s what it’s all about. Alexandre would have evolved in the sense that we feel the world changing, the relationship we have with travel has changed, it was not about for us or for ourselves. Travel will resume, it’s a matter of time, but now we will apprehend travel differently. The question we ask ourselves is “What’s in it for Rimowa?” and how can we turn this challenging period into something that we makes Rimowa emerge even stronger.