Why Lancôme, Kans and Fenty broke away from red-and-gold CNY playbooks

China’s beauty industry has never been short of Chinese New Year (CNY) packaging. What’s changed in 2026 is that packaging alone no longer counts as a strategy. In a market where consumers have grown fluent in “festive codes” — the predictable parade of red, gold, and zodiac mascots — brands are being judged on something harder to fake: cultural intention. This year’s strongest campaigns don’t just decorate products with the Year-of-the-Horse symbolism. They turn the holiday into an experience architecture, built around craft, place, story, and shareability — calibrated for a consumer mood that is more emotionally tired, more value-conscious, and more allergic to superficial pandering. “In 2026, Chinese consumers are looking for much more than the usual red-and-gold limited edition,” says Dao Nguyen, founder of Paris-based boutique strategic marketing agency Essenzia ByDao. “It has to feel meaningful, unique, sincere — and still giftable or fun. If it reads like a template, they scroll past.” If it reads like a story they can inhabit, they buy. Across prestige beauty, fragrance, and color cosmetics, the most effective plays are built as O2O worlds: made for content, yes, but also for footfall, ritual, and memory. From decorative localization to cultural proof For international brands, CNY has historically posed a dilemma: localize too little and risk irrelevance; localize too much and risk caricature. In 2026, a clearer logic has emerged. The strongest campaigns fall into one of two camps: those that embed themselves in credible cultural collaboration and craftsmanship, and those that deliberately step away from zodiac symbolism to reinforce brand authority. “Localization is tricky,” says Olivia Plotnick, founder of China-focused social and marketing consultancy Wai Social. “Many foreign brands fall into the trap of forcing cultural symbols rather than acknowledging and leaning into their own DNA. The campaigns that work treat culture as lived experience, not decoration.” Diptyque’s Lamei: When a Chinese name stays Chinese Diptyque’s 2026 Chinese New Year release is a case study in quiet cultural confidence. Instead of renaming or re-explaining its seasonal creation, the brand kept the Chinese name Lamei (蜡梅) — wintersweet — intact. The collaboration with Chinese artist Zelam Lin unfolds as an early spring Oriental garden, anchored in plum blossoms, a flower that blooms in winter and carries deep associations of perseverance and hope. The symbolism was never spelled out. It didn’t need to be. “The power of Diptyque’s Lamei is that it trusts cultural literacy,” Nguyen says. “Keeping the Chinese name, leaning into curiosity around the scent, and allowing symbolism to be discovered rather than explained — that’s what drove resonance and even blind purchase behavior.” Kans: Absurdity as cultural release If Diptyque represented poetic understatement, Kans demonstrated the opposite strategy: controlled chaos. For the Year of the Horse, Kans partnered with actress Ma Sichun — a collaboration that played on a linguistic coincidence, with “Ma” (马) meaning horse. Rather than producing a polished, aspirational film, the brand released an intentionally absurd, psychedelic short video filled with visual puns, nonsensical wordplay, and a looping refrain: “The Horse Year must go red (success)” (马年要红). The video spread rapidly on Chinese social platforms precisely because it eschewed refinement. Kans followed up with a more grounded cultural anchor, collaborating with Suzhou Museum on a limited-edition “Red Slim Waist Golden Horse” gift box inspired by a Qing-dynasty carved lacquer artifact featuring the “sea horse treading waves” motif. “Young consumers are emotionally tired,” Nguyen says. “Sometimes they don’t want depth — they want relief. Kans offered light nonsense, then anchored it with a giftable object that still carried cultural legitimacy.” Lancôme and the O2O experience template In prestige beauty, Lancôme emerged as a reference point for how to operationalize CNY across channels without diluting emotion. The brand’s 2026 campaign unfolded as a fully integrated online-to-offline experience, featuring immersive red-and-pink installations, wishing trees, and Taoism-inspired draw-lots rituals staged at Shanghai West Bund Gate M and Shenzhen MixC World. Each activation was designed to be visited, photographed, and shared — but also to function as a physical moment of pause and participation. “This campaign shows that a successful CNY strategy must be built as a seamless O2O experience,” says Anaïs Bournonville, CEO of AB Advisory, an agency focused on strategy and brand management in China. “Lancôme brings its universe to life with the same emotional intention online and offline.” Plotnick sees Lancôme’s strength in how it reframed consumption itself. “Lancôme elevates products into objects of cultural and social value,” she says. “This aligns with premium Chinese beauty consumers’ growing demand for taste, legitimacy, and collectability — not just efficacy.” Fenty Beauty: Turning Chinese New Year into a participatory playground Rather than engaging directly with zodiac symbolism, Fenty Beauty reframed Chinese New Year as a social, urban experience. From January 15 to 27, the brand staged a 13-day pop-up at Shanghai West Bund Dream Center, transforming the riverside industrial space into a “playful market” that blended beauty, food, and street culture. Seven interactive stalls translated Fenty Beauty’s inclusive brand DNA into physical form: a foundation “egg shop” showcasing 50 shades, fruit- and cocoa-inspired lip stations, rapid shade-matching counters, and a final “Fenty Face” makeup zone. Consumers were encouraged to move freely, test products, and create their own routines on-site. The activation positioned CNY not primarily as a gifting moment, but as a participatory one — aligning with Fenty’s emphasis on self-expression and community rather than ritual formality. Elizabeth Arden: When localization means skin, not symbols Elizabeth Arden took a deliberately restrained approach to Chinese New Year, choosing to localize through skin science rather than festive imagery. Partnering with brand ambassador Xin Zhilei, the brand anchored its 2026 campaign around a “3+1” capsule gifting system that combined its core ceramide capsule franchise with a newly launched gold capsule mask developed by a China-based team specifically for Chinese skin needs. The decision reflects a growing understanding that, for skincare, cultural relevance increasingly starts at the formulation level. The gold capsule mask builds on Elizabeth Arden’s long-standing ceramide repair expertise while integrating ingredients and delivery systems tailored to the climatic conditions, skin sensitivities, and usage habits of Chinese consumers. By organizing familiar hero products into a clearly structured, ritualized gifting system, Elizabeth Arden reinforced intergenerational trust and scientific credibility at a moment when consumers are increasingly cautious about exaggerated storytelling Documents and To Summer: Cultural healing On the domestic front, brands such as Documents (闻献) and To Summer (观夏) demonstrated how Chinese labels are redefining luxury through restraint rather than spectacle. Documents returned to its Mongolian roots through the horse — not as a zodiac motif, but as a symbol of family continuity and quiet strength. The campaign centred on a Mongolian New Year setting and a four-candle collection inspired by the “lantern of 10,000 families,” using light as a metaphor for unity and peace. “This campaign is a masterclass in subtle strength,” says Bournonville. “Without excess, it builds a powerful narrative around family, transmission, and collective calm.” Plotnick highlights the brand’s identity-building effect. “Documents uses sensory-driven experiences to assert a strong personality,” she says. “It creates cultural capital and appeals to consumers who value individuality over mainstream celebration.” To Summer took a similarly understated route with its “Bamboo Horse, Youthful Journey” campaign, collaborating with Ren Helin, curator of the Chinese New Year Paintings Museum, and sugar-painting master Wang Qiyang. The project focused on intangible heritage, everyday rituals, and the slow rhythms of preparation and sharing. “This campaign resonates because it offers cultural healing rather than selling,” Plotnick says. “It taps into emotional fatigue and turns nostalgia into something felt, not staged.” La Mer and L’Occitane: Craft as cultural currency For heritage luxury brands, craftsmanship has emerged as the most defensible form of localization. La Mer partnered with Chinese ceramist Ren Xinghang, drawing inspiration from the iconic Eight Horses painting (popular Feng Shui artworks symbolizing success, strength, and prosperity). Each ceramic piece was kiln-fired, producing unpredictable variations in blue and purple glazes — a visual metaphor for renewal, chance, and mastery. The design language extended smoothly across packaging and O2O activations. “The strength of this project lies in coherence,” Bournonville says. “Craft becomes a living cultural narrative, not an aesthetic add-on.” L’Occitane took a different but equally strategic approach, linking the Year of the Horse to its Provençal heritage through the Camargue horse. The campaign combined strong visual merchandising with digital touchpoints, including WeChat red envelopes — a reminder that even traditional mechanics retain power when deployed thoughtfully. Penhaligon’s: Aristocratic Drama, Repackaged for the Gifting Economy Penhaligon’s leaned into its signature strength — character-led storytelling — rather than overt festive symbolism. For the Year of the Horse, the British fragrance house extended its Portraits collection with limited-edition packaging built around a spirited, aristocratic equine figure, rebellious and unmistakably Penhaligon’s. Instead of reworking zodiac codes, the brand folded the horse into its own eccentric narrative universe, using it as a bridge rather than a translation. Built around pistachio, violet leaf, spices, and leather, the fragrance reinforced a sense of controlled wildness that resonates with China’s growing appetite for bold, niche scents. The Year-of-the-Horse packaging anchored the collection firmly in the New Year gifting cycle, delivering festivity without dilution of the brand’s theatrical identity. Perfect Diary: Festive symbolism meets scalable beauty technology Perfect Diary used Chinese New Year to reaffirm its positioning as a technology-led, mass-premium beauty brand fluent in both science and symbolism. The 2026 Chinese New Year series drew on auspicious motifs such as horseshoes and traditional geometric patterns, translating them into a cohesive visual language across lip, face, and eye products designed for high-volume gifting and everyday wear. The launch centred on the brand’s latest “bionic film” lip products, positioned as hybrid makeup-skincare solutions, alongside an essence-infused powder compact and a 12-shade “auspicious horse” eyeshadow palette. By balancing festive reds with softer, wearable shades, the range was designed to extend relevance beyond the holiday window. By pairing recognizable New Year iconography with repeatable, science-forward product platforms, Perfect Diary demonstrated how domestic brands are industrializing festive launches — using CNY not as a one-off creative moment, but as a mechanism to scale innovation, reinforce technological credentials, and drive long-term adoption. What CNY 2026 signals for beauty brands in China Taken together, the strongest Chinese New Year beauty campaigns of 2026 signal a decisive shift away from decorative localisation toward experiential and emotional credibility. Whether through immersive O2O worlds, restrained cultural symbolism, playful absurdity, or systemized gifting logic, brands are being rewarded for clarity of intention rather than surface adaptation. Chinese consumers are no longer evaluating CNY launches by how closely they follow festive codes, but by how well they translate brand identity into something culturally legible, emotionally resonant, and socially shareable.

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Why Lancôme, Kans and Fenty broke away from red-and-gold CNY playbooks