Fashion's Insatiable Need to Own It All
From Formula 1 to Salone del Mobile, fashion brands are taking over, and it’s causing a stir.
In today’s SOTA INSIDER, we’re talking about…
Why fashion is taking over adjacent industries
The new rivalry between fashion’s richest men
How Americans are reshaping English football
A new Universal Music and TikTok deal
You Can’t Escape Fashion, Even If You Tried
At last night’s Met Gala, there was more on display than slightly off-theme fits and “tried-to-go-viral” moments.
On Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the event dominating your Instagram feed this morning — hosted by Vogue’s Anna Wintour, Zendaya, Chris Hemsworth, Bad Bunny, and Jennifer Lopez, and co-chaired by Loewe’s Creative Director Jonathan Anderson and TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew — brought together hundreds of influential figures from fashion, music, film, sports, tech, and the creator economy, highlighting the blurring lines between once-separate creative industries.
While the boundaries between creative industries have faded over time, the recent proliferation of fashion across various spaces suggests that these lines have effectively disappeared altogether.
Over the weekend, during a four-day Formula 1 extravaganza in Miami, fashion brands made their presence known. Similarly, at the Frieze art fair in New York and the Venice Biennale, fashion was there. At the Salone del Mobile design fair in Milan, over two dozen luxury brands, including Bottega Veneta, Gucci, and Thom Browne, didn’t just show up, they took over, showcasing everything from collaborative art projects to fully fledged furniture capsules.
Over on our social feeds, fashion has taken over every restaurant, hotel, beach club, and creator we follow. More recently, there are the headline-grabbing promo tours like those of Challenger’s and Dune Two which have turned into mini fashion showcases in their own right. And of course the never-ending cultural calendars including sports events (even padel), concert tours, and TV shows which provide unlimited surface area for fashion brands to attach its product, signed ambassadors and storytelling to. Even our supermarkets aren’t immune.
Fashion’s increasing dominance over other industries has surged to unprecedented levels as it fires all its cultural cylinders at once, eliciting mixed reactions from those within these scenes. Here’s what we’re hearing…