Aesop has officially made its debut in Chongqing, China, opening its inaugural store at Longfor Beicheng Paradise Walk with a literary twist: instead of products, shelves were lined with books as part of the brand’s annual Women’s Library campaign.
Rather than a conventional product-filled launch, Aesop‘s Chongqing debut featured walls of books and zero fanfare. Visitors arriving between March 23 and March 27 could reserve a visit and select a complimentary title by women authors to take home. Staff stamped each book’s title page with a custom seal and sprayed it with a woody fragrance, turning every copy into a keepsake. One visitor, Ms. Meng, said, “However, when Aesop opened, there was no grand opening ceremony. Instead, there was a whole wall of books.”
The 2026 campaign is titled “See the Mountains, See the Waters, See Her” — a phrase that nods to Chongqing‘s identity as China‘s “mountain city” and…
serves as a metaphor for women’s qualities: mountain-like humility, resilience and endurance, and water-like flexibility, intelligence, and healing. The curated 36-book list was shaped by nine female reading ambassadors from fields spanning media, academia, literature, art, science, and film.
The Chongqing-specific selection includes titles such as Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper by British food writer Fuchsia Dunlop, a memoir rooted in her experience as a student at Sichuan University in the 1990s. Since the Women’s Library project began in 2021, Aesop has given away more than 115,000 books globally.
Aesop, founded in Melbourne by Dennis Paphitis, is widely known for design-led retail spaces that vary from city to city.
According to Aesop, the new Chongqing store draws inspiration from the city’s mountainous terrain, incorporating the region’s terracotta ceramic craft to reflect the warmth of local earth and the natural layers of this unique city…
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