In what was one of the country’s most extravagant luxury fashion events to date, Gucci took over the opera house in April in Vietnam’s commercial capital Ho Chi Minh City. The event lured about 100 VIP clients and celebrities from across the local film and music industries to a private showing of the brand’s Love Parade collection.

Though the glamour quotient kept high society matrons talking about the gala for weeks, business leaders were focused on another aspect of the event that had piqued their curiosity. Vietnam was one of only a few countries in Asia to be chosen by Gucci to host such an event — and the others were mostly larger luxury markets like Japan.

According to some local industry leaders, the Italian company’s decision to prioritise Vietnam will herald greater investment from other brands in the months and years ahead. Others argue that Vietnam merely got bumped up the pecking order because of greater pandemic restrictions elsewhere. Though Gucci remained silent on the matter, if recent luxury market activity in the country is any indication, it is probably more a case of the former than the latter.

One of Vietnam’s biggest fashion distributors, Duy Anh Fashion and Cosmetic (DAFC), added Tiffany & Co. and Montblanc to its portfolio of more than 60 international brands last year, following the return of Christian Louboutin in 2020.

DAFC’s parent company, Imex Pan Pacific Group (IPPG), led by husband-and-wife duo Johnathan Hanh Nguyen and Le Hong Thuy Tien, also signed a business cooperation agreement with the local unit of South Korean luxury retail group Lotte Duty Free in the same year to open a chain of downtown duty-free stores in Hanoi and Da Nang.

GlobalLink, another big luxury distributor in the country which operates mono-brand…