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The Fashionable Eyes of Digital Dr. Eckleburg.
As the purveyors of media and pop culture shovel through the ever increasing megabytes of content, the corporate overseers of luxury conglomerates hover above the now digital universe creating a perceived scarcity of product and inventing fashion’s very own cryptocurrency. This currency is better known as the collaboration.
Before the rise of logo x logo, luxury houses frequently borrowed from other ateliers to supplement items that may have existed outside the boundaries of their respective manufacturing. Viktor & Rolf exclusively use Louboutin shoes for their runways while legendary milliner Philip Treacy has often lent his artform to the couture runways of many of the greats. This ‘original’ form of collaboration was based more in a camaraderie of overall artistic vision rather than a singular garment’s design for commercial purposes. This method perhaps possessed a self awareness of the limitations of a brand. As these houses have expanded, some have modernized to include full ranges of Ready To Wear while others have resisted ecommerce and stuck to the original bones of the company.
In the last 15 years the digital sphere has further penetrated every aspect of the luxury market and little by little has dismantled the formerly rigid artistic borders between these houses. There’s been the high/low combo with many designers such as Simone Rocha, Margiela, Moschino, etc. partnering with fast fashion to create an accessibly priced, more cheaply manufactured diffusion line. There have also been plenty of crossovers between fine art and fashion such as Sacai x Kaws or Louis Vuitton x Murakami that have produced very limited and very financially coveted pieces that in themselves represent a work of art.
The first industry inkling of an inter-house luxury collaboration may in fact have come from Donatella Versace when she appeared in Riccardo Tisci’s Givenchy campaign in 2015. Though a collaborative capsule collection between the two houses never came to fruition, she publicly stated her hopes for a less rigid fashion future. Fast forward to February 2020 after many rumors and whispers swirling around the fashion twitter-sphere, Raf was announced as a co-designer of Prada alongside Muccia herself. A shared entry into her design process seemed unprecedented and represented an incredibly intimate meeting of creative minds in the luxury sector. Now, in 2021, the industry has seen not one but two major collaborations with Gucci’s ‘hacking’ of Balenciaga and the debut of Fendace.
It is worth noting that each of these collaborations, no matter the combination, is an incredibly secure financial bet. There is a reason that a new one seemingly drops with every phase of the moon. In the hypebeast world, most of these collaborations rest on the social cache of logo x logo, a great example being Kim Jones’s Dior x Rimowa suitcases or almost any collab that Supreme has done in the last 5 years. With the entry of heritage house x heritage house into the fashion scene, praise is to be hesitantly withheld in order to see if these collections may stand on the merits of their own design past the hype of the logos.
Demna, as a designer, is no stranger to the cloud. He seizes the untapped opportunity it provides for luxury fashion. With ‘Gucciaga’ he doesn’t refer to it as a collaboration rather than a hacking. In Demna’s own form of digital guerrilla warfare, he has extended the realm of Balenciaga’s licensing within which Michele is allowed to play. The collection is filled with Balenciaga’s silhouettes haunted by the fetishized past of Tom Ford’s Gucci. Both play with some of the brand’s most iconic moments, opening the show with a reinvigorated version of Tom Ford’s famous red velvet suit.
It is easy to see both the inner and outer concept of each garment. In pieces such as look 62, the structure of the garment nods to gucci with its inherently equestrian silhouette. The all-over floral print and hourglass bag is decidedly Balenciaga. In combination, it is both a mix and a reference to what classically defines the brands and creative directors respectively. This is then topped off with the modern artistic flairs of both Michele and Gvasalia that can be seen in the live bunnies being carried down the runway and the equestrian harnesses and whips that have been updated for the modern woman.
This combination actually lends great favor to the archival referencing that has consumed many luxury runways over the past few years. Using this format of collaboration, both Gvasalia and Michele provided enough fresh takes to one another to create something genuinely new and forward looking. This collection is simultaneously haunted by the past, consumed by the present, and expectant of the future.
Now, Fendace certainly takes a different approach. No, Gucciaga did not shy away from slapping both logos on certain garments, however this is not felt to be the majority of the collection. Fendace on the other hand is seemingly created from a 50/50 split of Versace and Fendi licensing. An all-over logo here, a copyrighted print there, and what is presented is a collection where the design concepts are undeniably demarcated between the two brands.
The overall collection possesses a sleek and sultry silhouette that is attractive to almost any woman. The more successful pieces were certainly the garments that were less focused on the logo or namesake print such as the chic mini dresses in looks 22 and 47. Then again, the garments that were a direct product of the Fendace mashup represented the logo-heavy licensing enthusiasts that made Donatella Versace and Kim Jones themselves. The duo, both within the collaboration and their respective houses, has conquered a concept that is accessible to the masses to be worn by only a few.
Up until very recently, designer collaborations have gone from either Point A (luxury houses) to Point B (fast fashion) or from Point A to Point C (hypebeast collaboration). But now, fashion is allowing these collaborations to transverse from Point A to Point A. A collaborative fashion future provides a fresh start with the beginning of each season, however; in order to avoid the exhaustion that has been felt with many drops before, designers will need to limit the frequency and expand their ideas to the furthest depths of their house’s reach. With the final frontier of licensing unlocked in the industry, the corporate conglomerates have obliterated anything that previously stood in the way of obvious lucrative profits. The inter-luxury collab is certainly here to stay.
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