In an Era of Collaboration Saturation, How Do Brands Stand Out?
New research confirms the power of storytelling in the collaboration equation. Highsnobiety and Launchmetrics have researched which collaborations made the most impact last year.
In the current climate, it seems no fashion collaboration is out of the question. Luxury house mashups that look like they’re straight from Canal Street? A high-fashion label and a supermarket collaborating on leather grocery bags? A never-ending stream of unhinged rubber clogs? We’ve seen the lot.
Over the past decade, fashion has gone into collaboration overdrive.
A sense of surprise and unexpectedness was once the key ingredient to a successful collaboration, but the sheer amount being released has now nullified that feeling. “Being shocked that a collaboration is unexpected? That doesn’t really happen anymore,” Sunny, owner of the cultural curation account Sunny.ssa, tells me. “We’re [always] waiting on the next big collaboration to happen.”
A once novel act has turned decisively mainstream and the saturated market means that brands must find innovative ways to ensure their latest co-branded collections hit.
New Luxury's New Rules67% of people want to see fewer but higher quality collaborations from brands.
In Highsnobiety’s recently published New Luxury’s New Rules — where we surveyed ~1,000 cultural pioneers from our global network — 71% of people agree that the story you tell around a collaboration is just as important as the final product. This means creating a desirable selection of goods is only half the job for brands when embarking on a collaboration.
“The story is equally as important as the product and the two must harmonize together. I hate seeing a forced narrative to make a story fit a product, it’s like mixing oil and water,” says James Else, digital content manager for sneaker platform The Drop Date. And his opinion is echoed by Sunny, who adds: “When brands align on shared values and objectives, their collaboration transcends mere product development.”
With 67% of people in our newest study stating they want to see fewer but higher quality collaborations from brands (and 44% finding the majority of collaborations released in the last year plain boring), we set out to discover which brands cracked the formula for collaborating last year.
Together with the software, data, and insights company Launchmetrics, we have reviewed Highsnobiety’s list of the top collaborations of 2023 and calculated each collaboration’s Media Impact Value™. Translating engagement from online and social media placements to a monetary value, it is the industry standard for measuring brand performance in the fashion, lifestyle, and beauty sectors.
Louis Vuitton Pulled Out All The Stops
Louis Vuitton x Yayoi Kusama returned a Media Impact Value™ of $39.7 million, convincingly taking the top spot in the study. The extensive collection came with 450-plus items, however, online discourse around the collection was dominated by almost everything except the vast selection of products.
Crowds gathered around its stores as a life-like, robotic statue of the artist pretended to draw dots on the window, huge models of Kusama were erected, towering over brick-and-mortar shops, and it was hard to swipe on social media without coming across its adverts. If storytelling is the key to a successful collaboration, then Louis Vuitton told its story the loudest.
Jörg HaasThe products become secondary. Like a pin you get in a museum shop from a show you liked.
“I think we can all agree that the installations were impressive, even if only seen via Instagram. No gallery or museum has the money to give an artist this kind of global presence,” says founder of the creative agency Beinghunted., Jörg Haas. “The product, in this context, I’d see almost as a souvenir. An expensive one, for sure, but since the “art” campaign is key focus point, the products become secondary. Like a pin you get in a museum shop from a show you liked.”
When Louis Vuitton and Yayoi Kusama first collaborated in 2012, this extent of multi-media storytelling was not necessary to create a now-iconic collection. Its over-the-top approach this time around is evidence of how things are different over ten years later.
Balenciaga and LOEWE Mastered The Art of Niche
The following two collaborations in the ranking, taking second and third place respectively, are Balenciaga x Erewhon (Media Impact Value™: $8.0 million) and LOEWE x Howl's Moving Castle (Media Impact Value™: $7.6 million).
Balenciaga’s collaboration with Erewhon, a Los Angeles-based supermarket chain with eye-watering high prices and a dedicated celebrity following, was unveiled in L.A. during a fashion show that poked fun at the Californian city’s celebrity-fueled culture. It’s not the first fashion collaboration that the grocer has participated in and out of Erewhon’s previous exploits with the likes of Cactus Plant Flea Market or Parisian label Casablanca, it doesn’t raise the bar from a pure design standpoint.
The co-branded brown bag and basic logo tees are relatively simple, however, Balenciaga x Erewhon was spoken about everywhere within the fashion industry — why? Because of its absurdity. The irony of high-end supermarket merch being on a runway and its comment on consumerism in a wellness-obsessed celebrity hotbed of a city created an appetite for the grocery x high fashion mash-up, not the resulting products.
Rounding off the top three spaces in the ranking is LOEWE x Howl's Moving Castle, a collection that turned aspects of the Studio Ghibli-produced film into clothing — a type of high-fashion merch that successfully builds on the narrative of the film. No forced storytelling here, it was a straightforward example of a film’s most popular characters and scenes turned into desirable, playful clothing. Or, in the words of creative director Jonathon Anderson, “it’s almost like virtual reality in wearable form.”
Studio Ghibli has built something of a cult fan base which Loewe tapped into with the sponsoring of the Studio Ghibli museum and a collection that picks up small details from the film. The brand has tapped into a specific community and spoken to its passion points in a way that feels authentic.
Wales Bonner and Martine Rose Standout in a Collab-Obsessed Sneaker Industry
The sneaker industry is responsible for much of the collaboration overload we’re currently experiencing and a new link-up is a near-daily occurrence. “With the sheer amount of sneaker collaborations we have now, there can’t be an authentic story behind every collaboration — and that’s what makes a collaboration click,” says sneaker expert, James Else.
Of the multitude of co-branded shoes relentlessly being churned out, two managed to hit our top five; those are Wales Bonner x adidas (Media Impact Value™: $5.2 million) and Martine Rose x Nike (Media Impact Value™: $5 million).
The iconic sportswear archive of adidas has given Grace Wales Bonner much to explore in her continued adidas collaborations, from the recently-popularized Samba sneaker to ‘70s-style tracksuits. Developing a story about the past sits well with audiences: 78% of cultural pioneers in our latest whitepaper said they, “enjoy visual inspiration outside of the trend cycle (e.g. archival imagery).”
James ElseWith the sheer amount of sneaker collaborations we have now, there can’t be an authentic story behind every collaboration.
Wales Bonner’s ability to link the adidas archive with the narratives that she cleverly weaves into her mainline collections has proven to be a powerful combination; it’s seen early hip-hop culture, the Caribbean’s football obsession, and the wardrobes of ‘80s diasporic radical thinkers all translated into a selection of elevated adidas sportswear. When its 2023 releases came around, “people had already built a relationship with that project and it was a continuation of the foundations that had been laid,” says Else.
Meanwhile, fellow British Jamaican designer Martine Rose used her collaboration with Nike as an opportunity to dissolve the boundaries between men's and women’s football — “Our aim with this collection was to have a conversation about why it's even gendered,” Rose previously told Highsnobiety.
“It was a big mix of culture and it got nailed correctly,” says Luke Miller, creative lead at The Drop Date, pointing to Martine Rose and Nike dressing Kendrick Lamar at the Grammy Awards and the collaboration’s mixing of contemporary football culture with high fashion sensibilities as its strongest aspects.
Collaborations are Desirability Initiatives
In a world that is not asking for any more collaborative projects, it’s more crucial than ever to remind ourselves why we do them in the first place. “Product comes first and the story of why it came to be is attached to it,” says Koch. “If a product needs an artificial story connected to it that goes beyond ‘the why’, then I don’t see much reason for the product to exist.”
The collaborations explored in our research generate awareness and conversations about Japanese art (by both Studio Ghibli and Yayoi Kusama), supermarkets as status symbols, and the lesser standing of women’s football compared to its male counterpart. These disparate topics give each collaboration a cultural relevance that’s not possible to garner from merchandise alone.
Jörg HaasIf a product needs an artificial story connected to it... then I don’t see much reason for the product to exist.
In our New Rules report, 57% of respondents agreed that collaborations between brands don’t even need to include products. A well-designed product is often just the cherry on top of a collaboration.
“Collaborations are no longer product initiatives, they are desirability initiatives,” reads our New Luxury’s New Rules report. This paradigm, where storytelling reigns supreme, gives partnerships more scope as to what’s possible and it’s creating a defining change in how the industry views collaborations.
