The relationship between fashion and brand is at the same time a struggle… Fashion and brand are two separate concepts that support each other yet work by opposing parameters. Let’s start with the concept of “fashion.” The dictionary defines fashion roughly as follows:
1. noun A temporary novelty that enters social life out of a need for change or an affectation of adornment.
2. A social taste that is influential for a certain period; an excessive fondness shown toward something.
3. adjective Temporarily in keeping with novelty and social taste.
What these three definitions have in common is that fashion is a social concept and a temporary one. For something to be in fashion, it has to be sought after, liked, bought or used by a certain segment of society in a certain period. In other words, at the core of fashion lies change — being influenced by certain movements and feeding off many social events.
In the past, changes in fashion came to life along more naive lines and spread over a longer time. For example, the wide, big-collared shirts, bell-bottom trousers, carved wooden armchairs, exaggerated bouffant hair, mustaches, hats and hundreds more that we saw in the films of the 1970s went on showing their influence for quite a long time — partly because society was not under conditions that forced it to push itself to change. Today, though, alongside long-term movements there are also many short-lived ones in fashion, sometimes changing from season to season. Among so many fashion experts it is, of course, not for me to debate or define fashion; the part that concerns me is fashion’s contribution to, and effect on, brand strategy.
Branding, unlike fashion, is based not on change but on constancy. It requires faithfully continuing the same strategy for many years — perhaps for centuries. Branding is about striking the same point again and again, like water boring through stone drop by drop, and about continuously using the brand in the same sentence as similar concepts. It is at exactly this point that fashion and brand clash.
Creating a strong brand is possible by meeting some emotional or physical need of a certain consumer group and continuing that strategy patiently. In this light, brands that read changes in fashion well and gauge the scale of change well can turn it to their advantage — while those that overreact are doomed to pay for it in later seasons.
Brands must understand individual and social psychology well. Then they can give fashion direction and find a place within the movement as a player. The sudden changes that occur in society must of course be examined carefully, and what is needed must be done. But what is essential is the brand’s strategy, and what keeps brands standing is keeping pace with fashion without breaking that strategy. For example, if you are a brand that appeals to families with children and that year’s fashion color is white, then your furniture needs to be stain-resistant, easy to wipe clean, or fitted with washable covers — because otherwise the families with children who are trying to keep up with fashion will not be happy with your furniture.
Brands that spin in the wheel of fashion mostly carry the banner of abstract values. They hold within them concepts like freedom, prestige, comfort and nonconformity. Brands that adopt a whole lifestyle strengthen more easily, because after a while merely choosing that brand can, in itself, stop pleasing its loyal audience if the brand strays. It should never be forgotten that the people who are our benefactors are our core target audience — those who believe in our brand’s values and, when the occasion calls for it, represent the brand. Between fashion and brand there is a relationship that nourishes each side but also makes life difficult for the other.
For example, a brand that promises health should not start making flip-flops just because flip-flops have become fashionable. (Many experts have said that flip-flops are unhealthy. But even a shadow of a doubt about this should be enough for a health-promising brand to step back.) In the automotive world, a brand that promises safety must not be swayed by changes that would keep up with fashion at the expense of safety, and must not let a shadow fall over the values it champions.
In the end, fashion steers consumers toward change, and that change results in shopping. But from that shopping, the brands that come out ahead are the ones that can hold on to their strategy while keeping pace with fashion.
Mağaza Magazine / October 2012
