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Marketing the Fashion Film Fantasy

by

Libby Banks

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This is the featured image caption
Credit: This is the featured image credit

Why fashion films have evolved to become the perfect Gen Y branding tool

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

Why fashion films have evolved to become the perfect Gen Y branding tool

Fashion’s collective obsession with film has been gaining some serious ground over recent seasons, with countless catwalk presentations introducing video elements or offering it as an alternative to the catwalk. Right now, the freestanding fashion film is enjoying (another) moment in the sun. Red carpet dressing for film premieres remains a huge industry, but it seems the fashion industry has shown that it has more serious designs on the film industry.

Karl Lagerfeld’s Remember Now, the latest movie that the designer has made for Chanel, has just been unveiled in Cannes. Meanwhile, David Lynch has created Dior’s latest cinematic instalment, which features Marion Cotillard and Prada has followed suit with its short film “Riviera Love”. Why has the fashion film become such a crucial marketing accessory now?

Two decades on from Lynch’s first advert for Calvin Klein’s Obsession fragrance in the late 1980s and following subsequent examples of the fashion-film-advertising trio like Baz Luhrmann for Chanel No 5 and Ridley Scott for Prada fragrance, the genre has evolved to incorporate two of the biggest developments to affect the luxury industry: social media and the globalisation of brands.

What’s most striking is that the commercial aspect of such films is diluted beyond recognition; branding consciously played down, if shown at all. Narrative is also kept to a minimum, partly due to the length of the film, and partly due to an approach that firmly places style over product placement. Instead it’s about summoning a “mood”, or, more accurately, a snapshot of a parallel universe created by that brand. These are used to demonstrate the brand’s sensitive, intellectual and cultural side – and can bring emotion and visual excitement to branding for the YouTube generation anywhere around the world.

It would seem the fashion film has partly risen from necessity; it’s an effective way to create millions of emotional individual connections to an international brand. This is particularly skilful in Lynch’s piece for Dior, which grounds the action in Shanghai, a decision surely encouraged by the importance of the Asian market. And while Kaiser Karl and Co can create this kind of mass connection, don’t expect the production of these sartorially-driven slices of celluloid to slow down anytime soon.

Sources
Independent – 10 May 10
Financial Times – 14 May 10
New York Times – 18 May 10

Libby Banks
Libby Banks

Associate Editor

Bio Not Found

CAMPAIGNS

Marketing the Fashion Film Fantasy

by

Libby Banks

|

This is the featured image caption
Credit : This is the featured image credit

Why fashion films have evolved to become the perfect Gen Y branding tool

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

Why fashion films have evolved to become the perfect Gen Y branding tool

Fashion’s collective obsession with film has been gaining some serious ground over recent seasons, with countless catwalk presentations introducing video elements or offering it as an alternative to the catwalk. Right now, the freestanding fashion film is enjoying (another) moment in the sun. Red carpet dressing for film premieres remains a huge industry, but it seems the fashion industry has shown that it has more serious designs on the film industry.

Karl Lagerfeld’s Remember Now, the latest movie that the designer has made for Chanel, has just been unveiled in Cannes. Meanwhile, David Lynch has created Dior’s latest cinematic instalment, which features Marion Cotillard and Prada has followed suit with its short film “Riviera Love”. Why has the fashion film become such a crucial marketing accessory now?

Two decades on from Lynch’s first advert for Calvin Klein’s Obsession fragrance in the late 1980s and following subsequent examples of the fashion-film-advertising trio like Baz Luhrmann for Chanel No 5 and Ridley Scott for Prada fragrance, the genre has evolved to incorporate two of the biggest developments to affect the luxury industry: social media and the globalisation of brands.

What’s most striking is that the commercial aspect of such films is diluted beyond recognition; branding consciously played down, if shown at all. Narrative is also kept to a minimum, partly due to the length of the film, and partly due to an approach that firmly places style over product placement. Instead it’s about summoning a “mood”, or, more accurately, a snapshot of a parallel universe created by that brand. These are used to demonstrate the brand’s sensitive, intellectual and cultural side – and can bring emotion and visual excitement to branding for the YouTube generation anywhere around the world.

It would seem the fashion film has partly risen from necessity; it’s an effective way to create millions of emotional individual connections to an international brand. This is particularly skilful in Lynch’s piece for Dior, which grounds the action in Shanghai, a decision surely encouraged by the importance of the Asian market. And while Kaiser Karl and Co can create this kind of mass connection, don’t expect the production of these sartorially-driven slices of celluloid to slow down anytime soon.

Sources
Independent – 10 May 10
Financial Times – 14 May 10
New York Times – 18 May 10

Libby Banks
Libby Banks

Associate Editor

Bio Not Found

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