With the ever growing popularity in the fashion community of brands collaborating and designing together, we as the consumer are now subject to new and special fashion statements that our favourite designers weren't necessarily offering originally. This derived from the first time a music artist first artistically directed a collection alongside the likes of Nike, Adidas and Reebok. This extension in this field has now brought on some of the biggest names in footwear, sportswear, streetwear, skaterwear, high street fashion and top designers together to reinvent and reconstruct their own most personal and standout silhouettes.
Coming back to the notion of musical artist curating alongside these top brand names: fortunately for some this has worked and the collections have been massive successes (e.g. Nike Air Yeezys) but for some artists (talking about Pharrell Williams) they have been criticised by the media for a lack of innovation and a overall sense of selling out to fashion.
- Everyone loves a good collaboration. The excitement of your two most favourite designers working together can be too much to handle... And especially when you have top designers working with high street brands (H&M with almost every designer possible within the last 10 year or Topshop with up and coming British designers such as J.W Anderson or Christopher Kane). Top designers quality and designs at high street prices... Yes Please!!
- Collaborations amongst streetwear brands inform their audiences that the possibilities of design for them are endless.
- Footwear collaborations bring sneakerheads worldwide more and more opportunities to cop amazingly designed limited edition classic silhouettes.
- On the business side of thing, it brings forth new buyers. Buyers who felt that the brands own original work was just falling short of top grade pieces deriving from colours used etc.
- Keeps fashion controversial. For those who keep updated in the fashion world, we have seen two of the most unlikely pairings come together to produce some of the best and most interesting pieces to ever come out of both brand camps.
- Collaborations with high street retailers can also allow luxury brands to experiment with clothing/fashion genres in a less risky and costly way. Alongside H&M, Jimmy Choo was able to move from producing shoes into women’s clothing and Stella McCartney’s collaboration with GAP Kids eventually led to the launch of her own childrenswear line.
- Every design team has their aesthetics. Collaborations however can be a tool to move away from their aesthetic or at least push the boundary. A good case of this comes in my much loved Alexander Wang collection with H&M. He pushed performance and sportswear to the forefront of H&M's aesthetic. An aesthetic not usually associated with the high street retailer.
- Makes the art of design the number one thing.
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