“We expect China to be the luxury industry’s key growth engine this year, especially given a slight deceleration in other core markets like the U.S. and Korea,” Edouard Aubin, an equity analyst at Morgan Stanley, said on a call last week.

He added that big brands “at the top of the pricing pyramid” with status-symbol value like Chanel, Hermès and Louis Vuitton were outperforming rivals. Those include Gucci and Burberry, both brands that have recently had a change of designer at their helm.

“Much of the initial spend driving the rebound is, for now, less to do with the middle class of China and more to do with rich people spending more,” Mr. Aubin said, noting that he expected a resurgence in middle-class spending to kick in later this year.

This desire for big-name luxury in China isn’t new. For more than a decade, the country, with 1.4 billion consumers, powered the Western luxury market, contributing as much as a third of market revenue. Two-thirds of that spending took place outside mainland China, as Chinese tourists flocked to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris and elsewhere to avoid their country’s steep import tariffs and consumption taxes.