Moët & Chandon taps Yoon – AMBUSH Creative Director – for its first-ever global product collaboration. The international fashion designer will create a limited-edition bottle of Moët Impérial in support of a charitable cause.
Moët & Chandon has invited innovative creator Yoon to redesign a champagne bottle for the House’s first-ever global productdesign collaboration. The Moët & Chandon x AMBUSH partnership showcases Yoon’s disruptive creativity and confirms the desire of the Maison to connect with the spirit of its time and stand for the values that speak to today’s generation while supporting a charitable cause.
In an audacious step forward, Moët & Chandon has offered a unique platform to Yoon, a Tokyo-based creator and a rising star among a new generation of innovative designers, to bring her creative vision and modern sensibility to this collaboration. The Maison’s choice of Yoon, co-founder and creative director of the fashion label AMBUSH, was driven by her pioneering spirit as a “rule-breaker” who shares with the House, a profound respect for time-honored traditions of craftsmanship and transmission of know-how, and a mutual desire to put contemporary creation in the service of preserving nature.
We are thrilled with this partnership with Yoon because it brings a disruptive freshness to the centuries-old heritage of Moët & Chandon, and aligns with our own commitment to preserving nature to ensure a bright future for the next generation,
says Benoît Gouez, Cellar Master of Moët & Chandon.
A portion of profits from the sale of limited-edition Moët & Chandon x AMBUSH bottles will be donated to the World Land Trust, an international conservation charity that protects threatened natural habitats.
An unprecedentd and inspiratinal collaboration
Moët & Chandon reconnects with the next generation by placing modern creativity at the service of a charitable cause. The partnership between Moët & Chandon and Yoon is particularly momentous because it is the first time in 152 years that the iconic bottle of Moët Impérial, the Maison’s signature champagne born in 1869, has been designed by an artist.
I was thrilled to be given carte blanche to re-design the bottle of Moët Impérial. It was a great challenge given its recognizable and iconic codes, but I also saw it as a great opportunity to bring my own aesthetics to this iconic champagne,
says Yoon, co-founder and creative director of AMBUSH.
Injecting her minimalist aesthetics into the redesign, Yoon has changed the gold neck of the bottle to a deep shade of black, contrasting it with a new embossed label in white, to produce an eye-catching design that suggests a blank slate, like a window onto a future filled with possibilities for those who dare step forward. While the bottle itself has been re-designed, the limited-edition of Moët Impérial in collaboration with Yoon is filled with the House’s flagship champagne defined by a bright fruitiness, a seductive palate and an elegant maturity, all distinctive characteristics of Moët & Chandon’s blends.
Its assemblage is designed to mirror the richness and diversity of the Champagne region’s vineyards, structured with a slight dominance of Pinot Noir, textured by Meunier and enhanced by the freshness of Chardonnay.
Yoon’s first visit to Epernay
At the heart of an agricultural heartland, Epernay is where natural beauty meets human know-how, guided by almost 300 years of heritage. Epernay, in Champagne country, has been home to Moët & Chandon since 1743. It is a place where nature sets the pace of life for the men and women who work the land and perfect the champagnes of the House. Yoon visited Epernay as a prelude to her first-time collaboration with the Maison. Yoon described her visit in these words:
“In the vineyards of Moët & Chandon, I felt a close connection with the lush green nature of a true agricultural heartland and was impressed with the care that goes into preserving the land and its age-old traditions. The House is very much engaged in ensuring the wellbeing of ist people, and it has a long history of doing so. So much of the daily work here is still being done by hand, in the vineyards as much as in the cellars.”
It was on her visit to Epernay that Yoon chose the World Land Trust to receive the support of the Maison from the profits of sale of the limited-edition Moët & Chandon x AMBUSH bottles.
You really see that the hand of mankind plays an essential role in making champagne.
Yoon, AMBUSH Creative Director
Protecting the terroirs of the world
Moët & Chandon has always taken pride in a tradition of giving that has made the greatness of the House since 1743. As part of this collaboration, the Maison decided that a global charitable organization, selected by Yoon, would receive a portion of the profits from the sale of the limited-edition Moët & Chandon x AMBUSH bottles. The decision was made by Yoon upon her first-time visit to Epernay, home of French House since its founding. “The devotion of the people at Moët & Chandon to nature and to their precious terroir. This inspired me to select the World Land Trust to receive the support of the House, so that together we could help preserve other terroirs around the world,” says Yoon.
The mission of World Land Trust is to support local conservationpartners, like Fundación Jocotoco in Ecuador, in their efforts to halt the destruction of ecosystems and to protect habitats where rare and endangered species still survive.
We are grateful for Moët & Chandon’s generosity in helping us preserve the Canandé Reserve in the Ecuadorian Chocó Forest, a place as biodiverse as the Amazon rainforest but far more threatened,
says Jonathan Barnard, CEO of World Land Trust.
According to the World Land Trust, only two percent of this forest remains today, still inhabited by ten percent of animal species found nowhere else on the planet. The support from the Moët & Chandon x AMBUSH collaboration will have a direct impact on stopping the deforestation of the Chocó, not just for the sake of its fragile species, but also to combat one of the main causes of climate change.
Photos & video: Moët & Chandon