Why luxury brands no longer shun collaborations
Partnerships provide emerging designers with a platform
Until 2000, collaborations weren’t on the cards for luxury brands. That changed when Marc Jacobs, creative director of Louis Vuitton at the time, enlisted artist Stephen Sprouse for the brand’s spring/summer 2001 collection. The graffiti-clad totes that emerged from the collaboration were a commercial success and a precursor of all the fashion link-ups to come.
Today, collaborations with artists, celebrities, influencers, streetwear labels and high-street fashion brands are the norm for luxury houses from Balenciaga to Zegna. Even luxury houses that could be considered rivals have partnered up. That was the case with Fendace, the mash-up between LVMH-owned Fendi and Capri Holding’s Versace unveiled last September, and the Balenciaga/Gucci “Hacker Project” launched earlier in the year (although in this case, the houses share Kering as a parent company). In both collections, the brands sampled and reworked the other’s signature motifs, silhouettes and logos.
“It says everything about how fashion has changed,” says fashion and retail consultant Robert Burke. “Designers now realise that they can feed off each other’s talent and creativity.”
At their core, collaborations are clever marketing ploys by brands that enjoy a similar level of commercial success and popularity. More interesting are the instances in which storied luxury houses lend their platforms and means to emerging designers.
In November 2020, Chinese designer Rui Zhou released her first short film, Emerald, the story of a rabbit with an emerald eye and the magical powers that it bestows on other creatures. The actions and thoughts of the animals, played by models clad in Zhou’s skintight knitted garments, are narrated in the style of a fairytale.
It’s a sweet and quirky story that in little more than three minutes offers a window into the aesthetic world of the emerging designer. “We never thought about doing a narrative [film] because we didn’t have a budget,” says Zhou on the phone from Shanghai, where she is based. “Then Gucci gave us this chance.”
Zhou, who founded her label Rui in 2019, was one of 15 young brands picked and financed by the Italian luxury house to create short films for a week-long digital “film festival” called GucciFest in the first year of the pandemic. The festival was followed, in September 2021, by the launch of Gucci Vault, an ecommerce concept store where products created by the same 15 designers were made available for purchase, alongside vintage Gucci items.
Described by Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele as “a space for expressive, aesthetic, and social contaminations”, Gucci Vault functions as a hyper-curated, Gucci-owned, multi-brand retailer. Effectively, Gucci is sharing its customer base with other designers, while giving them cachet by association. The emerging labels’ products are even styled with Gucci items, blurring the lines between the brands. It is perhaps the most remarkable example of how luxury labels, once territorial and closed off, have embraced a more open, collaborative and supportive ethos within the industry.
Gucci is not the only one lending a hand to younger talent. During Milan Fashion Week in February this year, Dolce & Gabbana hosted the debut show of Miss Sohee, the brand launched in 2020 by South Korean designer Sohee Park, in its Alta Moda premises. The Italian brand invited Park to use its ateliers to create accessories and lent archive fabrics that were upcycled in the collection. In the same week, Valentino showcased designer Marco Rambaldi’s catwalk show on the @maisonvalentino Instagram account as part of a larger initiative that will see the Italian brand spotlighting an emerging designer each season. Giorgio Armani lent his showspace to young Milanese designers in 2013.
These initiatives come at a time of particular need for emerging designers. The top luxury brands have increased their market share during the Covid-19 pandemic at the expense of independent brands.
London-based designer Bianca Saunders, who was part of GucciFest and Gucci Vault, describes the initiative as “a massive turning point” for her brand. Zhou says that the reverberations were felt across her business, from more Instagram engagement to increased retail orders.
For big players, lending their names to other brands comes with obvious reputational risks. What is the advantage for them? “Big brands can be very visible in amplifying small brands by giving them a helping hand and a platform, which can help consumers’ perception of them,” says Kathryn Parker, senior associate in luxury goods research at Jefferies. “When millennials and Gen Z are deciding which brands to buy from, they very much think about values rather than just products and marketing campaigns.”
Partnerships of this kind also allow luxury houses to build early relationships with promising designers who might eventually become candidates for in-house roles. In the case of Gucci Vault, they also serve to diversify the offer and price range.
This genuinely supportive environment is commonplace, especially across the younger cohort. Designer Hillary Taymour of Collina Strada has built her brand around a community of friends while London-based Phoebe English launched a WhatsApp group in 2019 called Fashion on Earth to share information with other designers about sustainable practices.
Like Saunders, who has often called on fellow designer Saul Nash to choreograph her short films and shows, they are inspiring examples of this new climate. Luxury brands are just starting to catch up.
“It speaks to the psyche of fashion today,” says Burke. “There is strength in numbers and supporting each other as opposed to being in a stand-off.”