A cross-brand collaboration with Balenciaga, successful social media campaign featuring James Corden and the introduction of a new homeware line has helped Gucci hold onto its top position as the “hottest brand” for the fourth quarter in a row, marking a full year of dominance for the Italian fashion house.
CONSUMERS
Who Wins The Hottest Brand of The Past Year? Gucci, Of Course.
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Credit: This is the featured image credit
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
A cross-brand collaboration with Balenciaga, successful social media campaign featuring James Corden and the introduction of a new homeware line has helped Gucci hold onto its top position as the “hottest brand” for the fourth quarter in a row, marking a full year of dominance for the Italian fashion house.
Gucci has once again topped the list of hottest brands, according to a quarterly report that ranks the most popular brands and products, compiled by global fashion shopping platform Lyst.
The report, which analyses the online shopping behaviour of more than 150 million shoppers a year, searching, browsing and buying fashion across 17,000 designers and stores online, found that the optimism from the start of the year has continued into the second quarter as the industry begins to look ahead to a post-pandemic future signalling the opportunity for brands to tap into the rapid evolution of e-commerce and brand building within digital.
“E-commerce remains a bright spot for fashion, with the pandemic continuing to accelerate digital growth. The quarter’s hottest brands have all honed their strategies for reaching and engaging shoppers anytime and anywhere,” said Peter Henderson, Head of The Lyst Index.
Dior, Nike, Louis Vuitton and Prada made up the remaining top five brands, with Dior climbing one spot to second place, and Louis Vuitton up by three places to claim the fourth spot, having only entered The Lyst Index earlier this year.
The hottest brands of the second quarter of 2021, according to The Lyst Index.Credit: Courtesy: Lyst
One of the most talked about moments of the past quarter, Gucci’s collaboration with Balenciaga helped the Italian fashion house retain its position as the world’s hottest brand, as well as the hosting of a virtual garden on gaming platform Roblox and a successful social media campaign featuring James Corden.
Meanwhile, Dior’s collaboration on a menswear collection with Sacai and a show-stopping fashion show in Athens to present its 2022 Cruise collection helped it secure second place, and Nike’s debut of the Air VaporMax 2021 with 40 percent recycled content and a second collection with tennis champion Naomi Osaka, all tapped into overarching trends valued by younger consumers like sustainability, technology and cross-collaboration.
Demand increased for items in the travel and leisure categories, with searches for dresses increasing by 371 percent, beachwear rising by 192 percent compared to the same period in 2020, and demand for sunglasses also increasing by 198 percent, reflecting the shift in consumers optimism as restrictions begin to tentatively lift.
“Among consumers there’s a distinct shift in mood, with items associated with going out and travel rising again. Shoppers on Lyst were once again adding sunglasses and beachwear to their baskets and wish lists, with triple-digit growth across these categories,” Henderson added.
With the prospect of more events taking place, the power of celebrities and influencers climbed, helping drive demand for products such as a zebra print bikini worn by singer Dua Lipa and model Hailey Bieber and a daisy print dress seen on singer Selena Gomez and model Kendall Jenner.
Other trends that the report noted in the second quarter were the rise of gender-fluid fashion, as searches related to agender fashion rose by 46 percent during the quarter for items like Thom Browne’s pleated skirt and Fendi’s Baguette bag appearing in the men’s hottest products list as well as demand for rubber and resin footwear, which rose 214 percent.
Adidas YEEZY slides were the hottest men’s product in the world in the second quarter, Balenciaga and Crocs' collaboration went viral in June and Gucci’s rubber sandals took seventh place on the women’s hottest products list.
The report also takes Google search data and rich social media metrics into account, which looks at account brand follower growth and multi-platform mentions of products, as well as engagement statistics worldwide and related keywords over a three month period.
For the full findings from The Lyst Index, please click here.
Welcome to Data Digest, our breakdown of the latest data releases and reports focused on the luxury industry.
Senior Editor, Luxury Society
Limei Hoang is a senior editor at Luxury Society, based in Geneva. She was formerly an associate editor at the Business of Fashion in London. Previously, Limei spent six years at Reuters as a journalist, and she has also written for the BBC, The Independent, and New Statesman.
