Andy Warhol, Zaha Hadid & 10 Luxury Laden Supermodels
Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.
PARIS – Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador Dalí created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamo’s shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.
In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, a book marking the foundation’s 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes “a connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.”
The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemparain building in Paris
The sound bites and statistics that are causing a stir in luxury circles
“ Our online male sales are three to four times bigger than Saks and five times bigger than Bloomingdale’s. ”
Kevin Ryan, CEO of the flash sale site Gilt Groupe
Women’s Wear Daily
30%
How much more the world’s 10 top-earning models collectively earned ($112 million) last year compared to the year before, thanks in part to consumers increased spending in the luxury sector.
“ I would like to do fashion, but there are some really great people out there who do it better… You can have ideas, but it’s not the same. ”
Zaha Hadid, architect
Women’s Wear Daily
“ H&M; is opening a concession in Selfridges… [but] H&M; is on every high street, in every city, all over the world – is that really the exclusive, designer reputation Selfridges has cultivated at its four “luxury shopping” locations? ”
Rosie Baker, Marketing Week’s retail specialist
Marketing Week
$38.4 million
The record-breaking price fetched at the recent Christie’s New York auction for a work by Andy Warhol (in total the 8 Warhols on offer were sold for $90.99 million while the record-breaker was his 1964 ‘Self-Portrait’)
Contributor
Luxury & Fashion Business Journalist, International Herald Tribune, Financial Times, Vogue.com Strategic Consultant, Swiss Textiles Award, Diptrics