What to know | YSL Beauty takes BLOCK PARTY into a Shibuya karaoke venue

YSL Beauty held a one-night limited "YSL BEAUTY BLOCK PARTY TOKYO EDITION" in Tokyo, choosing the Karaokekan Shibuya Main Store as the venue to combine fragrance, music and Japanese karaoke culture. This is a review of brand planning that has been held, not a permanent experience or public exhibition that is still available for reservation.

Why put the fragrance party into karaoke?

BLOCK PARTY has been held in cities such as Madrid, New York and London, and will use local culturally identifiable spaces. Previous forms include bakeries in France and record stores in London; the Tokyo edition’s choice of karaoke changes the scene to part of Japan's daily entertainment.

The difference in this choice is that karaoke originally has songs, rooms, and interactions with fellow travelers. When a brand event enters an existing space, participants will see not only product displays, but also the original behavior and atmosphere of the place.

What role does LIBRE play in the event?

The event uses the brand’s representative fragrance LIBRE Eau de Parfum to establish a connection with the space through fragrance. Compared with putting the perfume bottle alone on the cabinet, putting the fragrance into a scene with music and people will put the product into a more complete life imagination; however, the event atmosphere does not mean that every user will get the same olfactory performance on the skin.

If you are interested in LIBRE itself, you should still go back to the official product information and personal test the fragrance. The concentration, volume and usage of perfume are different information from the venue arrangement of the brand party; the proportion of fragrance cannot be judged solely from the event photos.

Attendees span music, film, television and dance

People present include Nobuaki Kaneko, Dori Sakurada, Maria Tani, Aju Makita, Michi, Shuntaro Yanagi and Kenjiro Yamashita, etc., as well as members of Avantgardy, IS:SUE and CIRRA. People from different fields appear together in the karaoke space, allowing moving images to simultaneously connect fashion, entertainment and music culture.

Character attendance and endorsement relationships should be understood separately. Participating in the same brand event does not automatically mean that every guest becomes a brand spokesperson; nor can any unannounced music collaboration, product collaboration or long-term business relationship be inferred from the group photo.

From a party, see how brands use cities

For readers who care about retail and event design, this project can be read from three things: why Shibuya was chosen, why Karaoke was chosen, and how the fragrance was put into the original space. Compared with replicating the same set of display installations, existing cultural forms in different cities can provide different starting points for interaction.

This also reminds people preparing for Tokyo itineraries that the one-night activities in the news cannot directly become the list of future attractions. The karaoke parlor is still the original entertainment venue, but this YSL project has ended; if you want to find the brand's follow-up public activities, you should read the new announcements separately to avoid mistaking the review photos for content that can be experienced every day.