Gluttony wants its share
To create a sort of quadrilateral in the quadrilateral (with Montenapoleone, San Paolo, Verri and Sant’Andrea on the four sides) also the fact that on the corner between Montenapoleone and Verri there is Pastry Marchesi (remained open also in the central weeks of August) and on the corner between Montenapoleone and Sant’Andrea there is the Cova pastry shop (which instead, as usual, remained closed in August). Sant’Andrea is a shopping destination mainly thanks to the boutique Chanel, but also those of Giorgio Armani, Bottega Veneta, Church’s, Maison Margiela, Rimowa, Miu Miu, Roger Vivier and, from 2021, de La Double J, a brand that has restructured the spaces that once belonged to Stuart Weitzmann (spaces that had been designed by Zaha Hadid). After the summer will come Thom Browne (Zegna group) and other changes are not excluded, but one thing is certain: the spaces in via Sant’Andrea do not remain vacant for long, unlike, as mentioned, via Spiga, which is also within reach.
No one sleeps, not even in Montenapoleone
Important changes are also underway in the via “Regina”: Hermès reopened in early July, Cartier, as mentioned, will do so in time for Christmas. On the other hand, Coach and La Perla have closed and it is not yet clear who will replace them. Berluti will soon inaugurate the new space next to Loro Piana, almost at the intersection with via Manzoni, after leaving the boutique in via Sant’Andrea. The Swatch single-brand store is also closed, but it has a very large space in the nearby Corso Vittorio Emanuele. The most important works will concern the building almost at the intersection with Corso Matteotti, where Bulgari and Louis Vuitton are now located and where Giorgio Armani was also located: the thousands of square meters will be completely rethought and redistributed among the LVMH group maison. Moncler maintains its large space across the street and is simultaneously renovating that of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, another perennial “open construction site”, also because the spaces in the gallery are all owned by the Municipality of Milan, which derives significant income from rents and renegotiates contracts cyclically.
Long Covid effect in the quadrilateral: the vision of Dla Piper
The story so far reflects the most evident changes and certainly some of them have escaped us. But what is happening “behind the scenes”, in the real estate brokerage firms specializing in luxury retail and in those of the lawyers who draft the contracts? An inside look is that of Davide Rossetti, lawyer of Dla Piper, an international law firm which has an office in Milan and is present in over 40 countries, in America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Africa and the Middle East and which is following many disputes on recent and older contracts. Many of the changes are linked to the Covid emergency period and lockdowns, which have penalized even the high-end sector, considered the most resilient of all. But only those who have really broad shoulders have managed to absorb the missed sales and the lack of passage in the streets of luxury of customers and aspiring customers for many, too many months.. The rents in via Montenapoleone are the highest in Italy and the adjustments related to the pandemic have not been relevant. Hence the whirlwind of closures and renovations, as confirmed by Davide Rossetti.
The consequences of lockdowns
The quadrilateral was no exception compared to any other form and place of physical retail: “The closures of the shops imposed by law in the period March 2020-April 2021 have had important effects – remembers Rossetti -. The shutters of clothing stores remained down in Lombardy for a total of 135 days, even not all of them in a row “. As we know, admissions are still contingent today, but they were even more so between one lockdown and the next and immediately after the end of the second, when the vaccination campaign was only just beginning: “There was a reduction in visitors in boutiques, even when the shops were still open: in 2020, compared with 2019, there was a reduction of unique visitors to boutiques, on average, by 53%, with a peak of -71% during the holiday season ”, underlines the lawyer of Dla Piper, quoting the Deloitte Report on District Analytics of March 2021.
The decline in tourism
Then of course there was the interruption, for many countries, of arrivals from abroad: «The reduction of the figure of the so-called footfall it also depended on the very significant reduction in travel by foreign consumers to our country – remembers Davide Rossetti -. In the period March 2020-March 2021, compared to the same period in 2019, sales to customers from the United States, China and Russia, which absorbed approximately 45% of total sales in the pre-Covid period, recorded a 95% reduction“. These data are extracted from the Planet Intelligence database with reference to the sales of 80 shops in the quadrilateral and therefore give a fairly precise picture. “The figure is not surprising if we consider that, in 2020, the Milan airport system served 73% fewer visitors than in 2019, as can be seen from the 2020 financial statements of Sea, the company that manages the Milan airports ”, concludes Rossetti.