AND YOU CALL YOURSELF A FAN?
The crowd is heaving. Your heart is racing. If it weren’t for your Vetements X Levi’s high-waist rigid jeans, your knees would be going weak. No, it’s not a Harry Styles concert, but the feverish sense of desire is just as high... Jamie Huckbody investiga
“THERE’S A MUCH BIGGER FOCUS ON BEING ‘COOL’ THAN BEING ‘IMPORTANT’”
All these people were screaming and going mental, and you could see that they didn’t know whether to dive straight in or try to video it all for their social-media feed. They were literally beside themselves.” The willowy fashion editor, who looks like she might topple over at any moment such is the size of her Céline bag, isn’t describing a mob of braying Beliebers or the fiercely protective devotees that make up the Beyhive, but rather the moment when the Louis Vuitton X Supreme collaboration dropped into store this past June.
“There were queues around the block – easily 600 people – and then you were allowed no more than 15 minutes in the [pop-up] shop to grab a maximum of six items. Can you imagine? Fashion has now reached such a point of hysteria that they’re rationing how long we can stay in a luxury store for and how much we can buy.”
The editor, who has requested to remain anonymous, is quite clearly pissed off: she was hoping to spoil her two Supreme-obsessed boys with the Kim Jones co-designed goodies. But such is the crazed fanlike behaviour sweeping through fashion today that everything from the design process to the shop floor is being affected in its wake, with brands tuning into the trainspotters’/stylespotters’ obsessive nature and simulating the sensation of a fashion lust-rush – that feeling you get when you discover a new label that is sooooo you and, more importantly, that nobody else has – at retail level.
“Some of the red and white mixed-logo pieces – the bandanas, hooded sweatshirts and leather iphone cases – were all listed on ebay within 24 hours for double or triple the original retail price,” continues the editor, laughing incredulously. “But some resellers didn’t even wait to get home to do business: they targeted those customers who couldn’t be assed to wait in the line and traded goods right outside the shop on the street. I saw fat bundles of hard, hard cash being exchanged.” I ask if she politely followed protocol or if she dabbled on the black market. “No comment,” she says.
We all know somebody who has suffered the queues of an H&M X Kenzo/balmain/isabel Marant launch with the intention of making a profit on ebay, but the secondary market – with its roots in street style and sneaker geeks who buy up as much limited-edition product as possible in order to hustle a profit – is fast becoming an essential part of 21st century brand development. “Let’s face it, if you were a massive luxury or fashion brand that had to inspire a whole new generation of consumers, you can do little wrong by aping the subversiveness behaviour of the street,” says Samuel Clark, a luxury brand consultant/trend forecaster. “Designers have been doing it for decades. Fashion marketers and retailers are finally getting in on the action.”
Indeed, ever since Kanye West’s game-changing Yeezy Season 3 show, where Mr West unveiled a fashion collection, launched his new album The Life Of Pablo and a video game all at the same time, the fashion industry has been pulling back on bourgeois establishment exclusivity and ramping up the fan base inclusivity. West’s show was revolutionary for two simple reasons – it put a focus on racial diversity and acknowledged the obvious: that fashion is a part of, not separate to, the music and gaming worlds. In short, everything that we’re interested in now.
“No-one really buys into that whole fashion being stuck up its own ass thing anymore,” says Clark. “There’s a much bigger focus on being ‘cool’ than being ‘important’, and a belief in standing up for those people who may have been marginalised. It’s no coincidence that all of a sudden we have plus-sized, transgender and, of course, a racially diverse selection of models fronting advertising campaigns and walking runways. Everything is being turned on its head.”
For unconventional, look no further than Alexander Wang’s SS17 collaboration with adidas Originals. Proceedings kicked off a few days before the launch with posters in the style of official emails between Alexander Wang and staffers at adidas Originals
appearing throughout New York. This was then followed up with a leaflet campaign, the hand-outs featuring an inverted phone number and the Wang logo. Fans who had turned sleuth got an answering machine message that revealed three locations: “12pm, Mercer and Canal. 3pm, 5th Ave and 57th St. 6pm, Brooklyn.” Most callers presumed that it was a casting call, not realising that those details were actually the times and locations of unmarked trucks selling the collection out of bin bags. Yes, you read that correctly: bin bags.
“If we [had] spread the news of the collection to every magazine or blog two days before, everyone would’ve known about it, but this was a much more fun way to go about it,” said Ferdinando Verderi, who helped mastermind the event, in conversation with Fast Company. “If you’re illegally selling goods, you don’t broadcast it everywhere. You tell a few people, giving out clues only some will understand. So we really wanted to mimic that behaviour... A lot of this street culture is being part of a specific moment.”
The same idea was obviously on the minds of Demna Gvasalia and his Vetements collective when they launched their “Official Fake” capsule collection last October. A limited-edition remix of signature pieces from spring 2015 to autumn 2016, the event – a “garage sale” in a warehouse on the outskirts of Seoul – was hosted in partnership with Matchesfashion.com.
“We received a phenomenal response with customers queuing for 17 hours ahead of opening the doors and we had sell-out success on products,” says Natalie Kingham, buying director at Matchesfashion.com. “These exclusive capsule collections that we partner with brands on are incredibly powerful as they offer us something that no-one else has and gives our client compelling product and an immediacy that seasonal collections aren’t necessarily able to. It’s also a way of engaging with our customers in new and innovative ways.”
While many diehard fans travelled from all over the world to South Korea just so they could bag a few of the “Official Fake” T-shirts, the Vetements X Matchesfashion.com love-in was more significant in the way it acknowledged the influence of the fake designer market – and more specifically, how some of the more outrageous replicas have become just as desirable as the real thing. “Even Gucci has been referencing its own fakes. Sure, we all want meaningfully crafted pieces with a heritage background, but we want them with a heavy dose of irony,” says Clark, quite aware of the tongue-in-cheek chic of his Guccighost tote with its embossed logo surmounted by the word “Real” painted in the style of a graffiti tag (complete with spray paint drips). “Just look at Alessandro Michele’s Gucci cruise 18 collection.”
It’s true: Michele claimed one misspelt rendering of the Italian luxury house’s logo – Guccy – as the brand’s own by knitting it into a fuchsia-pink jumper that featured a teddy bear and by tracing it in pearls on a renaissance mini-dress of gold and green lace. “The reason why Gucci’s sales are through the roof is because he really understands what fans want: mash-up. The way he puts crazy combinations of vintage and sportswear together, his use of androgynous models, the way he engages with them through social media... Did you see the shoot he did using aliens? He’s a total rule-breaker and people like that,” adds Clark.
There’s no doubt it’s this renegade approach that’s captured the hearts and minds of a generation raised
“WE WANT MEANINGFULLY CRAFTED PIECES, BUT WE WANT THEM WITH A HEAVY DOSE OF IRONY”
on global unrest. Despite working for billion-dollar luxury-goods companies, Michele, Gvasalia and even Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri with her cultish Dio(r)evolution tees, are giving the two-finger salute to the establishment and employing an entrepreneurial spirit, much like the Insta-born start-up labels that blazed the trail before them.
The best early example of this fashion fan club phenomenon can actually be found in Brisbane, where label Blackmilk has generated a cult following based on its bold printed tights. The brand was conceived on social media through a blog, encouraged by a community of women enamoured by legwear and keen to be involved in the design process. Members of the Blackmilk community became known as “Sharkies”, getting their name from their voracious appetite: the label’s Brisbane factory at one point sewing up to 2,000 pairs of tights every day to keep up with demand.
“It’s not just about the clothes; it’s the social side of the brand, too,” says Shona, one of those enviable yoga-instructor types who effortlessly mixes her luxury with her athleisure. She’s wearing Blackmilk’s “Evil Eye” hosiery with an Isabel Marant skating skirt, a big Jacquemus shirt and a killer pair of Louboutins that provide the ultimate finishing point to the lacey cobwebs that wrap around her legs. “I went to the Euro Sharkiecon in Majorca, Spain, in 2014 [another meet takes place in Las Vegas] and it was amazing; I finally got to meet all these people I’d been chatting to online for ages. And we all got dressed up in our Blackmilk gear.”
With more than 70 private Facebook groups used by various Sharkie communities, there’s a lot of feedback that Blackmilk’s team filter through the design process, including the deliciously ironic demand for pieces that reference other fandoms including Batman, Harry Potter and the infamous R2-D2 swimsuit that resulted in a cease and desist order from Lucasfilm. (The two parties reportedly came to a mutually beneficial licensing agreement.)
With the same kind of devoted fan base but a look that could not be more different is Ace&jig, a New York label born out of Jenna Wilson and Cary Vaughan’s love of Indian-crafted, limited-edition textiles. “[Our customers] have formed this awesome community where they really support each other,” Wilson told Business Of Fashion. “They have dinner, they connect with each other, they travel to see each other, they do all these great things together, and so it’s become about a lot more than just a shirt. It’s becoming... kind of a movement.”
These Ace & Jig fanatics (#aceandjigfriends) get together about six times a year at swap parties so they can purchase the kind of new pieces that are quickly defining Brooklynboho as well as get old garments repaired on site and, more importantly, bag “the one” that got away (#aceandjigregrets). “Brand loyalty is not a problem for us,” continues Wilson, referring to the fact that the overwhelming choice offered by e-commerce means that consumers are reluctant to stay loyal unless they join a brand’s social community. “The people who love our brand really love it, and they’re very loyal and they’re very engaged.”
Of course, the very nature of fans and fan clubs is that their enthusiasm can spill over into the ridiculous. Take the case of the woman who was so crazy for Camilla – she of the kaftans – that she allegedly posed as a security guard at a sample sale in Sydney so she could bag as much of the merch as possible. “Mad fight going on at the Camilla warehouse sale aka a living nightmare,” tweeted a bystander of the pandemonium that was created by more than 1,000 women who had queued from the early hours to grab a $200 bargain. “The apocalypse wears a rhinestone kaftan.”
We have been warned.