Cutting Through The Noise of Fashion Week
By R. Larsson, Advertising Week
Fashion Week is no longer what happens on the runway, brands inside and outside the agenda are finding ways to get involved. Theres a big opportunity for brands to step into the cultural spotlight beyond the runway. Brands who aren’t supposed to be there are finding unique ways to get involved. Please see below for industry experts’ perspectives on how brands are making their mark at Fashion Week
Tammy Smulder, CEO, Trends&Culture
Fashion Weeks now attract two very different types of brand activity.
For fashion brands, it remains serious business: launching collections, defining the brand for the season and generating buzz among editors, buyers, influencers, celebrities and the wider fashion community. Creativity comes in the invitation, the show itself and of course the fashion and casting. And it doesn’t end with the show, as the re-see afterwards gives key press and buyers the opportunity to experience the collection in much greater detail. You’ll see less gimmicks coming from the brands showing.
Brands outside fashion, particularly FMCG brands, might look to capitalise on the fanfare and cultural attention on fashion week, and the general public often latches on to these moments. Kleenex offering make-up touch-ups between shows is a great example. It finds a playful and relevant role for an everyday product in a world where you wouldn’t necessarily expect it.
Elena Nicolaidis, EVP of Events & Experiences, Sparks
Every year at New York Fashion Week, I find myself watching the brands orbiting the runway more closely than the runway itself, especially the ones that might not seem to have a reason to be there. This year, the Fragrance.com takeover is one worth talking about. A handful of fragrance brands staged short fashion shows and “paparazzi moments” across SoHo, Chelsea, and Flatiron, playing straight into that early-2000s tabloid vibe. Fragrance brands might not have something to say about clothes, and they didn’t try to. All they needed was to be photographed in the middle of the action, close enough to the noise that it became part of how the week gets told and retold. That’s what we look for at Sparks: brands who create the moment themselves or notice one already building and hand people a reason to walk into it.
Ayla de Moraes, Head of Strategy, Joint
It’s a brief all strategists dread, let’s be honest.
“Can we make our cereal brand part of the cultural conversation at London Fashion Week?”
Ermmm… no?
Because the reality is, there is no rhyme or reason why anyone in the world needs or wants a tiny chicken nugget shaped handbag (see: NY Fashion Week “The Le Nugguette bag” Link) . And yet, that’s the wonderful thing about Fashion Week. Common sense doesn’t always prevail.
What does prevail you ask? Things that are bold. Nonsensical. Bizarre. Things that if we are honest, almost never come from a strategists brief.
What these brands do have in common. A deep, clear and unwavering understanding of who they are. (Which almost definitely did come from a really tight strategy) Because only then can you put your brand somewhere it has absolutely no obvious right to be, and make it feel like it belongs.
That’s why a chicken nugget handbag, or a collaboration between cordial brand Belvoir Farm and Maximilian Raynor, can make perfect sense, because the unexpectedness is the point. Because what does a fishing tackle, a marching band and a village raffle have in common? Absolutely sweet FA. But if you are Belvoir Farm, then these make absolute perfect sense.
Fashion Week is a hard event to tap into. It’s noisy, busy and brutally unforgiving. The brands that cut through aren’t necessarily the ones that belong there. They’re the ones brave enough to make you wonder why they do.
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