The new fashion creativity
If you want a transformed fashion industry, distribute its creativity
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To save fashion, we need to radically reimagine its creativity.
Aside of Phoebe Philo, who doesn’t believe in brand storytelling (and can afford not to), the fashion creativity has increasingly been distributed from product design across other areas of business. Marketing, merchandising, cultural influence, collaborations, and PR and events all create the context for the product to be discovered, embraced, and propagated, and need to be managed accordingly.
Fashion creativity is today a matter of organizational design. Product alone cannot win, and neither can just the brand or the business. Bringing them all together is a challenge of creative production.
Consider Gucci: Sabato De Sarno’s new designs started trickling into stores only in mid-February of 2024, nearly six months after his first presentation and only two of Gucci’s flagships have been transformed into De Sarno’s new creative direction. Gucci’s Q1 results are not the failure of design; they are a failure of production.
Just like an entertainment company pulls in the different talent to deliver a movie or a television show, fashion companies need to do the same — to produce not just their seasonal collections, but their entire creative and business output.
Pharrell is an exceptional producer who understands entertainment and the need for ongoing content, events, and drops. His Louis Vuitton work doesn’t only adhere to the fashion calendar, but also creates moments in-between, like store openings, launches, new product drops, and exclusive capsules (most recently with Tyler, The Creator).
Read the rest of this analysis on The Sociology of Business.
