2024-08-07 10:03:34
Meme-based strategy at Marc Jacobs or Loro Piana, comic short film at Loewe, pranks and tricks at Selfridgespunk jewelry at Tiffany’s, Louis Vuitton spread, Health Goth at Balenciaga, cosplay at Jacquemus, ambient kidcore… Are luxury brands in the midst of an adolescent crisis?
Photo caption: NANANÈREUH_ At a time when the richest man on the planet is having fun trolling on a platform bought for this purpose, we say that the world is turning into a playground. And our friends in luxury are not far behind, already converted to the pleasures of adolescent carefreeness, like here, with Ice Spice for Heavn by Marc Jacobs. Teenage dreams never die.
As the profile of luxury customers continues to get younger and shift towards more popular, TikTok-addicted fringes, luxury houses are loosening their 18-carat strings to turn to the simple pleasures of teenage life: memes and humor, cosplay, cute and trashy, good laughs, and more generally the ability to throw everything in the towel. Just look at Ice Spice posing for Heavn, the ambiance brand Y2K teenage dream by Marc Jacobs, invoking all the aesthetic clichés of adolescence. The red heart-shaped lollipop licked greedily, the eyes that say “fuck you”, the crop top with a retro video game print, the diamond piercing in the navel… We are here in the adolescence in the cagole version of the Chirac years, but the aesthetic and nostalgic spectrum of this adolescent crisis of luxury is broader and subtler.
LUXE MIMI-CRACRA
In recent months, the kidcore lolita trend, halfway between Courtney Love with her Peter Pan collars and grunge Mary-Janes, and that of Dora the Explorer with her frilly socks and nerd bob, has flooded the streets. An aesthetic of cute well illustrated by the Irish designer Simone Rocha or Sandy Liang, and which is latent in many recent collections based on pale pink or sky blue Petit Bateau. Opposite, there is of course the Emo style, whose value continues to rise on the NASDAQ of fashionistas. We saw it again in the Spring 25 collection by Balenciaga, which revives the Health Goth of the 2010s, according to W Magazine. The return to hype of Chrome Hearts and its medieval biker jewelry was in fact nothing anecdotal, we see it in Pharrell’s collection for Tiffany, with chains and bracelets with punk spikes – in 18 carat gold. Punk is not dead ? Lol! Let’s also note the boom in trash, with Stella McCartney and her latest campaign against a backdrop of waste, or with models getting banana skins or tomatoes thrown at them during the AVAVAV show at Milan Fashion Week. Cute, dirty luxury, or when the teenage crisis goes too far… or not.
Liberation feels good. Beyond aesthetics, it seems that luxury brands are borrowing from teen culture to rethink their marketing, their concepts, and even their storytelling, particularly around games and humor.
MEME PRODUCT & RECREATION
In the era of the adulification of luxury, Marc Jacobs is the king of the playground. He revived absurdly cool fashion happenings alongside director Yulya Shadrinsky, based on falls down stairs, fake jewelry store robberies, and models whirling dervishes on construction equipment. Same song on TikTok. When Marc Jacobs arrived there in 2020 to sell his perfume Perfect to Gen-Z, he simultaneously launched the #PerfectAsIAm challenge, urging the audience to express themselves online with carefree passion. The hashtag has millions of views. The brand also skillfully uses memes, as in this partnership with Gina Lynn, whom the internet calls the « Chick-Fil-A girl »or more generally by surfing on popular memes. Loro Piana did the same in a privileged teenage version on a partnership with « Constant the Gstaad guy »a humorous account that trolls the wealth of the Swiss.
The trendy luxury clothing store Ssense has also taken the adage on board. « no meme, no business »since it presents its clothes on Insta in the form of well-felt memes, placing the products in a narrative, a joke, a situation, an attitude, etc. I subscribed for the memes, I ended up with a new pair of luxury sneakers… And their strategy has influence. Loewe was inspired by a meme from Ssense to decline it into a very successful comic short film around a pronunciation contest. The Spanish house has the art of the bankable decline of memes. Last week, it created a tomato-shaped bag in reaction to a meme representing a tomato accompanied by the caption, « This tomato is so Loewe I can’t explain it ». In his post, Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson writes, « meme to reality ». And in the comments, we feel a real desire for this tomato bag, linked to a dopamine moment experienced collectively online. Loewe invents the meme product. Bingo! Gling gling!
CHILDREN’S GAMES
Beyond marketing, luxury houses are now offering products and experiences around children’s activities, but with a chic twist. We’ve seen Jacquemus cosplaying Jean-Luc Godard’s film Le Mépris – he calls it “revisiting”. We can’t count the number of brands using video games to create desire – Balenciaga are the latest, with a collection filtered through PS1, and accompanied by a game. What else? Oh… Paul Smith releasing miniature cars, Balmain teaming up with Pop Mart toys, Louis Vuitton and its luxury spread for very rich little gourmands, a pop-up store of pranks and tricks for the British luxury store Selfridges, or Saint Laurent opening a sort of luxury third place in Paris – an artistic squat with damaged but perfectly smooth gray walls. What will their next discovery be? An artistic amusement park? Oh no, Drake already did it… We know that luxury, fashion and art are a good mirror of society and its state of mind. While we see the sad political immaturity of recent events in France or in Uncle Sam’s, and while we already had a slight impression of living in a Disneyland version of a Peter Pan world, we tell ourselves that it is perhaps not luxury that is having its teenage crisis, but the whole world.
By Jean-Baptiste Chiara
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#luxury #teenage #crisis
