Collaborate This
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but it seems to me that fewer and fewer brands are actually designing their own wares anymore – it’s all about the collaboration, or “collab,” right now. Moreover, it’s equally prevalent with cult brands and highstreet/mall stores alike. Sperry by Band of Outsiders, Uniqlo by Jil Sander, H&M by Lavin, Brooks Brothers by Social Primer, and Moncler by Thom Browne are just a few examples from the last year or so. I certainly don’t want to make this sound like a bad thing; often the results are amazing. But, like everything, there are the goods and there are the bads.
Before getting into the actual collabs, I think the trend says something really positive about the current culture of fashion and style. Collaboration and the combination of different perspectives offers a wider array of options to a wider audience than we have ever seen before. Not everyone can buy a really unique Albert Elbaz creative from Lanvin, but with some help from H&M you can come close. Not the same, but close.
And the blogosphere has its fair share of designer collaborators as well, including Social Primer, Street Etiquette, and quite a few others getting chances to share their visions in cloth and leather in addition to the words we’re all familiar with. This dialogue between brands and the people who consumer and promote their goods is fantastic in my opinion. It’s the one thing that has always lacked in the fashion word – top-down is being supplanted, albeit in a small way, by a dialogue between the design studio and the street.
That said, there are also some less-than-successful collabs in my opinion. Not to hate on Brooks Brothers, I’m a big fan and patron, but Black Fleece seems more like the retail equivalent of a shot of adrenaline to the heart than a long term solution to me. Even though Thom Browne and Brooks Brothers are, at their cores, both purveyors of a certain mid-century American look, that is where the commonalities end for me. Or at least where they should end. Rather than neutering Thom Browne’s outrageousness in order to fit a sort of exaggerated Brooks looks, maybe either brand should have tried refining their own styles to fit a different audience. Maybe this would have been more successful than each brand censuring themselves in order to fit into some nebulous middle ground that is too extreme to be one and too tame to express the other.
To be fair, Brooks Brothers has both added some more “contemporary,” whatever that word means, updates to their classic looks since and have engaged in the fun and preppy reversible bowtie collab with Social Primer – and those I can firmly get behind.
Often these collabs either give us a bit more individual style at a more moderate price point or allow the consumer and the producer to refine ideas and create an even better product. And other times they just seemed forced and muddy the waters instead of clearing them up. But, either way, in an industry of egos and monolithic labels, a little conversation never hurt anyone, now did it?
