Versace Lunar New Year 2022 Brings the Year of the Tiger to Life
Versace launched its Lunar New Year 2022 campaign on January 1, 2022, presenting a film-format gala that stages the exclusive VersaceLunarNewYear capsule collection through performances by acrobats, dancers, professional ice skater Lu Chen, and dancer Jia Liu, positioning the brand as culturally engaged and fashion-forward for Year of the Tiger celebrations.
The campaign carries the tagline "Tiger time" and operates under the broader VeryVersace creative program. Published globally at the start of the calendar year, the film arrives precisely as Lunar New Year anticipation builds across Asian markets and among diaspora communities worldwide, anchoring Versace's seasonal offer to one of the most economically and emotionally significant cultural events in the global calendar. The decision to open on January 1 rather than on the Lunar New Year date itself — February 1 in 2022 — extends the brand's window of cultural relevance across the full month.
The campaign's mechanics centre on a single film asset that doubles as both editorial content and a product showcase for the limited VersaceLunarNewYear capsule. By dressing performers rather than conventional runway models, Versace translates the collection into motion, allowing the garments to be seen in dynamic, celebratory contexts rather than static presentations. The gala format — with its connotations of prestige, gathering, and spectacle — reinforces the brand's identity as a house that equates fashion with event. The campaign is directed at an internationally minded luxury consumer for whom cultural fluency is as desirable as craftsmanship, and it presents Versace as a brand capable of honouring tradition without subordinating its own visual language to do so.
Versace positions the Lunar New Year 2022 campaign at the intersection of cultural celebration and aspirational fashion. The strategic rationale is clear: Lunar New Year is among the highest-spending consumer periods in Asian markets and increasingly significant across Chinese diaspora communities globally, making it a natural moment for luxury houses to release dedicated capsule collections and corresponding creative work.
The global personal luxury-goods market reached approximately €353 billion in 2022, up approximately 22 percent year-over-year, according to Bain and Company. Within that context, Chinese consumers — both in mainland China and internationally — represent a disproportionate share of luxury fashion spending, making campaigns calibrated to Lunar New Year culturally strategic as well as commercially rational. McKinsey estimated that luxury fashion sales would be 15 to 25 percent above 2019 levels in 2022, reflecting a post-pandemic rebound that Versace's January launch is positioned to capture.
Versace operates in a competitive field where Gucci, which holds approximately 4 percent of the global luxury-goods market according to Bain and Company, and Dior, which holds approximately 5 percent according to the same source, both produce dedicated Chinese New Year campaigns. The VersaceLunarNewYear capsule strategy is consistent with category norms but differentiates through the brand's signature maximalism and its use of performance artists rather than celebrity endorsers in the conventional sense. Capri Holdings, which acquired Versace in December 2018 for approximately $2.12 billion according to Capri Holdings' own corporate disclosures, reported approximately 50 million social-media impressions in China connected to the campaign, according to Capri Holdings investor communications. That figure signals meaningful market penetration in the world's most contested luxury arena.
The Versace Lunar New Year 2022 film is a single-asset production built around the spectacle of performance. Rather than adopting the editorial stillness common to luxury fashion advertising, the campaign places the VersaceLunarNewYear capsule collection in continuous motion — on acrobats mid-routine, on dancers mid-phrase, and most distinctively on professional ice skater Lu Chen, whose presence elevates the gala concept into something closer to live cultural event than product film.
Lu Chen is a figure of genuine cultural weight: a Chinese national champion and Olympic medallist whose career spans decades of international competition. Her participation is not incidental casting but a deliberate signal of authentic connection to Chinese cultural achievement. Dancer Jia Liu similarly brings professional credibility to the production, ensuring that the performers are legible to audiences familiar with both disciplines. The effect is a campaign that earns its cultural positioning through talent rather than simply asserting it through imagery.
The visual language of the film reflects Versace's house codes — bold colour, baroque pattern, and a theatricality that treats fashion as performance — while layering in iconography appropriate to Year of the Tiger celebrations. The gala setting provides a narrative frame that justifies the collection's ceremonial richness; these are garments presented in the context for which they were ostensibly designed. Production credits for the Versace Lunar New Year 2022 campaign beyond the named talent are not publicly documented, and the agency responsible for the campaign has not been disclosed. What is evident from the finished film is that the production operates at a budget and ambition level consistent with Versace's positioning as a top-tier global luxury house within the Capri Holdings portfolio.
Versace Lunar New Year 2022 earns a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong cultural grounding and distinctive use of performance talent, set against the absence of independently verified creative awards and limited documented media analysis.
The most concrete performance figure available is the approximately 50 million social-media impressions in China attributed to the campaign, as reported by Capri Holdings in investor communications. That number positions the film as a meaningful reach event in a market where luxury brands compete intensely for cultural visibility during the Lunar New Year period. Within the advertising archive where the campaign is catalogued, the film accumulated 31,221 views, 1,193 likes, and 30 comments, according to Clapboard's own archive data. These figures indicate a sustained level of professional and creative-industry engagement over the three years since publication.
No verified awards have been identified across Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, or the Clio Awards for this campaign. No indexed critical reviews have been identified in Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious. The campaign's structural effectiveness, however, is visible in its mechanics: a precisely timed January 1 launch, a named cultural figure in Lu Chen, a dedicated hashtag architecture across VeryVersace and VersaceLunarNewYear, and a capsule collection that gives audiences a direct commercial pathway from film to purchase. These are the components of a culturally fluent, commercially oriented luxury campaign executed with the production values the Versace brand demands.
Versace Lunar New Year 2022 is a film campaign published on January 1, 2022, celebrating Year of the Tiger. It showcases the exclusive VersaceLunarNewYear capsule collection through performances by acrobats, dancers, professional ice skater Lu Chen, and dancer Jia Liu, operating under the VeryVersace creative programme.
Professional ice skater Lu Chen and dancer Jia Liu star in the Versace Lunar New Year 2022 film. Lu Chen is a Chinese national champion and Olympic medallist whose casting signals authentic cultural connection. Acrobats and dancers also perform wearing the VersaceLunarNewYear capsule collection throughout the film.
The VersaceLunarNewYear capsule is an exclusive limited collection released by Versace to mark Year of the Tiger celebrations in 2022. Styles from the collection are worn by all performers in the campaign film, which serves as both an editorial showcase and a direct product presentation for the seasonal offering.
Capri Holdings reported approximately 50 million social-media impressions in China for the Versace Lunar New Year 2022 campaign. The campaign film also accumulated over 31,000 views and more than 1,100 likes in the advertising archive where it is catalogued, according to Clapboard's own archive data.
Versace Lunar New Year 2022 receives a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100. The score recognises the campaign's strong cultural positioning, distinctive use of performance talent, and precise market timing, while reflecting the absence of independently verified industry awards and limited documented critical review.
Versace differentiates its Chinese New Year campaign through performance artists and a gala film format rather than conventional celebrity endorsement. Competitors including Gucci and Dior, each holding significant global luxury market share according to Bain and Company, also release dedicated Lunar New Year capsules, making creative distinction a key strategic priority for Versace.
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