Everybody loves a good collaboration, Kanye and Jay-Z made us watch the throne, Dre and Snoop had us sippin gin and juice and Kanye showed us all of the lights with basically everybody in the music industry. Musically, collaborations change the game and help artists come together and create something bigger for each audience to enjoy and enhance their brands. Fashion basically does the same thing; two great artists, creating something new and fresh for their different audiences doubling up for an unforgettable treat for the masses.
Brand collaborations are nothing new, mostly seen with catwalk designers creating mutual, beneficial trade-offs with mass-market retailers such as H&M and basically every high end fashion designers out there, they are now branched out to high end fashion houses collaborating with the overly everywhere street wear designers to create buzz for the high end houses. There are different types of fashion collaborations; from celeb and brand collabs, to fashion and sport, and artist and designers who share an aesthetic sensibility reaching for something they couldn’t create themselves.
2018 though was the height of this, seeing great collaborations from Burberry and Vivienne Westwood, Luis Vuitton and Supreme, Fendi and Fila, JW Anderson and Converse and my personal favorite Burberry and Gosha Rubchinsky. It’s become the norm for high end and street wear to collaborate and give us high end street wear, whereas before it was the other way around, street wear needing high end to build.
These collaborations bring flair and street together creating a beneficial market for both fashion classes, we are seeing more and more of these collaborations charging the fashion pages of the world. The start of such collaborations began with mass market retail giant H&M and the late yet forever great Karl Lagerfeld a 15 years ago. Most people seeing this as a non beneficial fashion faux pas at the time, didn’t see a future in such collaborations but according to Vogue Magazine history, the collaboration sold out almost immediately, items flying off the rack, seeing a need for high end to meet retail, it’s been a booming market strategy. Since then, collaborating has diversified from not just fashion designers and fashion houses but celebs have jumped on the band wagon and who can blame them? This is a great exploitation for both celeb and fashion house. We’ve seen such great collaborations such as Vetements and everyone from Rihanna to Asap Rocky, Guess and Asap Recently, early last year Moncler released a new business venture entirely based on multiple collaborations with a mix of diverse designers from cult Japanese designers Kei Ninomiya and Hiroshi Fujiwara, street wear buzz label Palm Angels all the way to high end fashion’s Valentino’s couture king Pierpaolo Piccioli and many more. The Italian brand dubbed it the Genius project and genius it was. According to sales revenue from Vogue, it garnered a 27 percent jump in revenue in the first half of 2018 alone showing other brands collaborations can be like a DJ Khaled track, the more the merrier and definitely more beneficial for all.
Since then, the later half of 2018 saw major collaborations of not just street wear and high end collaborations but high end and high end collabs; including the ever so wonderful and irresistible capsule collab of Vivienne Westwood and Burberry, two powerhouse high end houses creating for the masses. Now if you think this is ground breaking the true king of collaborating H&M hasn’t slowed down. From working with Rei Kawakubo, Versace, Martin Margiela, in 2018 the ambitiousness of H&M and its partnership craze reached new levels bringing in street wear vanguard Jeremy Scott the creator of one of the greatest sneakers, my personal top faves, the Adidas wings. As Ann-Sofie Johannson, the creative advisor of H&M said, “The word collaboration is now part of fashions’ everyday language. With each collaboration, the aim is to pin point the essence of the brand. It is all about capturing the designers’ or the brands’ DNA and offering it to the world”. Besides releasing their own clothing line H&M prides itself by collaborating with a different designer each year, sometimes two and last year saw Jeremy Scott delivering a star studded runway show in New York delivering a street wear kissed and celebrated H&M line giving H&M a link into the ever popular phenomenon of street wear.
Collaborating now seen as a here to stay trend offers great artistic and ground breaking fashion looks and ideas for designers and affordability and access to the masses. Collaborations although seen as a no no are a definite YES in today’s world, giving us one of a kinds, new looks and master pieces the world can enjoy and acquire. Although starting off as just a marketing tester and risk, collaborations are a new power move the fashion industry cannot go without, bringing different fashion worlds together and providing high end lovers a chance to access catwalk looks. This had become a great business strategy the world is delighted to have.
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