Luxury Society’s selection of news articles that are not to be missed this week.
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What We’ve Read: Ralph Lauren’s 2018 Game Plan and How This Will Be the Year of the Influencer
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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
Luxury Society’s selection of news articles that are not to be missed this week.
1. Ralph Lauren’s 2018 Game Plan Focuses on China, Digital and Wholesale Improvements
Expansion in China, a new e-commerce platform, evolving the product, increasing marketing spend and growing its international presence are key initiatives in 2018.
Read this on WWD.
2. For Fashion Brands, 2018 Will Be the Year of the ‘Influencer Roster’
Hate them or love them, the Instagramming and unboxing mass of inspirational lifestyle gurus known as influencers are only becoming increasingly central to the marketing strategies of fashion and luxury brands in 2018.
Read this on Glossy.
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3. Balenciaga’s Billion-Euro Plan
Creative director Demna Gvasalia and chief Cédric Charbit on the changing luxury landscape — and why the phone charger is the new ballgown.
Read this on Financial Times.
4. Mechanical Watches Almost Disappeared Forever. Here’s How They Didn’t
A concise history of timepieces, 1976 to 2000.
Originally published by Joe Thompson in two parts on Hodinkee.
Read this on Bloomberg.
Cover image credit: Ralph Lauren
Writer, Luxury Society
Before joining the editorial team at Luxury Society, Camille worked with a South African magazine, The Month, as well as a Swiss digital publication, Luxuria Lifestyle. She then went on to join the team at a leading business publication in Geneva, Bilan Magazine.
