Storytelling in Luxury Fashion

Brands, Visual Cultures, and Technologies

Amanda Sikarskie, Amanda Sikarskie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000259780
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

This book examines the ways in which luxury fashion brands use their heritage in their digital storytelling and marketing.

With chapters from authors in China and Macau (PRC), India, Romania, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, covering British, Chinese, French, Japanese, Indian, Italian, and Turkish brands, this truly global collection is the first book of its kind devoted solely to the emerging study of digital heritage storytelling. This method of reaching potential consumers and perpetuating brand identity is a hugely important factor in the marketing of luxury brands and has yet to be studied comprehensively.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in fashion studies, fashion history, design history, design studies, digital humanities, and fashion marketing.

Part I Brands

1 Picture Perfect

Hermès, Its Silk Scarves, and Twenty-First-Century Experiential Events

Madeleine Luckel

Luxury marketing scholar Jean-Noël Kapferer once wrote, “Products are communication, and communication should be undertaken with the same exceptional exigency for style, for ultra-qualitative details[,] as any of the products.”¹ Undoubtedly, French luxury fashion house Hermès embodies that sentiment, from its carefully crafted goods to each and every manner in which they are displayed. Recently, the brand’s visual footprint has been greatly expanded thanks to Instagram and, more specifically, to the thousands of posts shared with the hashtags #hermeesmatic or #carreclub.

Long before the digital revolution, Thierry Hermès founded his namesake brand as a purveyor of high-quality horseback riding equipment in 1837.² One hundred years later, the French house released its first square silk scarves, which, like so many Hermès products, grew out of craft-oriented roots.³ But scarves, and other equestrian accessories, are not the historic domain of Hermès alone.⁴ Other European luxury houses, including Gucci and Ferragamo, have been producing colorfully patterned silk scarves for decades.⁵ Nonetheless, Hermès has succeeded in maintaining its reputation as the ne plus ultra destination for this specific accessory, thanks in large part to the house’s deft ability to position itself as such.

The company’s brand identity is predicated on high-end luxury and an enduring commitment to craft-based manufacturing techniques. These values have echoed through the company’s two recent traveling, transitory, and highly visual scarf-focused events— Hermèsmatic, a dip-dyeing pop-up, and the Carré Club, a more general peripatetic endeavor.⁶ (The word “Carré,” it is important to note, is French for square. However, in the Hermès universe, it is often used as a synonym for scarf.⁷) These ephemeral events, which traveled to New York, Los Angeles, Austin, Rome, and Singapore— among other destinations—indicate that the company has pivoted to embrace experiential and inclusive strategies that are inherently linked to social media use. Luxury theory, and specifically works by Thomaï Serdari and Jean-Noël Kapferer, can help explain the ways in which these current digital marketing efforts build upon preexisting precedents, reflecting past efforts by Hermès and the luxury retail industry at large.

In 2016 and 2017, visitors were invited to bring their own, often old, Hermès scarves to be re-dyed in one of three colors at Hermèsmatic.⁸ While the seemingly inclusive service was free of charge, it promoted the consumption of high-end luxury accessories with direct and indirect messaging. Hermèsmatic pop-ups created momentary communities in which ownership of an Hermès scarf was an unofficial prerequisite for entry.⁹ Although the remaking of scarves was the ostensible purpose of these pop-ups, visitors were not involved in the process beyond the initial color selection.¹⁰ Instead, the interiors of the pop-ups, which featured orange washing machines in which the scarves were dyed, facilitated the creation of social media content.¹¹

Figure 1.1 Inside the New York edition of Hermèsmatic.

Source: Photographed by Madeleine Luckel.

Figure 1.2 Washing machines in which the scarves were dyed.

Source: Photographed by Madeleine Luckel.

In 2018, Hermès broadened this model by organizing its globetrotting Carré Club. Once again, these events, which continued into 2019, were free and open to the public and included an area in which visitors could purchase an Hermès scarf.¹² Unlike Hermèsmatic, the apparent goal of the Carré Club was more simply for visitors to see, photograph, and share images related to the company’s scarves. Visitors were encouraged to orbit around the main areas of the pop-ups, where some of Hermès’ most successful freelance silk scarf designers were working and available for interaction.¹³ In this way, Hermès drew attention to its longstanding and frequently touted commitment to craft while focusing visitors’ attention on the house’s relationship with artists and its products’ apparent links to fine art.¹⁴

It would be naïve to hypothesize that any of these productions are arbitrary and exist within a vacuum. They are instead excellent examples of experiential marketing, a subset of rational choice theory within microeconomics that emphasizes experiences in an attempt to appeal to consumers’ emotions and memory.¹⁵ The significance of this study is fourfold. First, the history of Hermès scarves is a rich topic that has not been thoroughly explored within academic texts. Second, experiential events are a growing trend within the luxury industry and have yet to be sufficiently examined in academic publications related to fashion marketing. Third, these events merit deeper investigation, as they and their digital footprints bring up and expand upon elements

Figure 1.3 The exterior of Manhattan’s Carré Club, located in the Meatpacking District.

Source: Photographed by Madeleine Luckel.

of traditional luxury and luxury marketing theories. Finally, Hermès’ events appear to be pioneering efforts within this industry and may influence subsequent efforts by other companies to communicate their own narratives.

This investigation uses a case study methodology while also relying on the idea of reception theory. Reception theory, a phrase largely associated with Wolfgang Kemp’s The Methodology of the Aesthetic Reception, plants the focus of an investigation firmly on the reaction to an object by the spectator rather than on the object itself.¹⁶ This chapter concentrates on Hermès’ recent ephemeral events and the reactions of visitors, as opposed to Hermès scarves as objects worthy of art historical interpretation. Photographs taken at the events, as well as social media posts created by others, make up the majority of primary sources cited. The events are analyzed through the lens of theories espoused by luxury and luxury marketing scholars. Guy Debord’s idea of the spectacle and Jonas Hoffman and Ivan Coste-Manière’s writings are considered.¹⁷ However, Jean-Noël Kapferer’s Kapferer on Luxury: How Luxury Brands Can Grow Yet Remain Rare and Thomaï Serdari’s article “Experiments in Suchness: Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Silk Shiki for Hermès” form the primary basis of this study’s analysis.¹⁸

Thomaï Serdari and Jean-Noël Kapferer, among others, have posited interesting, and potentially foundational, ideas related to luxury and luxury marketing theory. In her text, Serdari appears to rebut Thorstein Veblen’s famed The Theory of the Leisure Class, expounding upon luxury’s ability to delight while also citing the work of Kapferer, whom she herself considers a pioneer within the field.¹⁹ While Kapferer is a prolific author, his 2015Ref_60_FILE150314136001 book Kapferer on Luxury: How Luxury Brands Can Grow Yet Remain Rare compiles some of his most notable texts, inserting sections of new material in some instances.²⁰ Kapferer’s work is an excellent foundation for understanding luxury companies and, in particular, family-run French brands.²¹ What is more, it is his unique marrying of business and the humanities that positions his work as an influential example to others and as a helpful model for this chapter.²²

While tangible products are essential to luxury industry businesses, intangible ideas best explain how the field is functioning in an increasingly digital era. This chapter discusses aspirations and dreams within the context of luxury marketing theory, as well as the ways in which these ideas are evident in the Hermèsmatic and Carré Club events. Excess, scarcity, and exclusivity are also examined—with attention paid toward their contradictions—as are ideas related to the store as an environment for spectacle. Finally, the role that fine art and artisans often play in the luxury fashion industry is addressed.

Aspiration and Dreams

While marketing is generally understood as the practice of promoting products to the outside world, Hermès has consistently insisted in the press that it does not have a marketing department.²³ Since Hermès does not conduct market research, such as organizing focus groups or soliciting and responding to consumer feedback, this is technically true.²⁴ Instead, for brand and product development, the house relies directly on its employees, artists, artisans, and craftspeople, who are trusted unreservedly.²⁵ Yet outside sources routinely discuss the company’s marketing practices, glossing over this nuance. A Business of Fashion article, titled “Hermès’ Anti-Marketing Marketing,” focused on the nature of the company’s marketing work within the context of the Carré Club.²⁶ ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Images
• List of Contributors
• Preface: A Sea Change
• Introduction
• PART I Brands
• PART II Visual Cultures
• PART III Spaces and Technologies
• Index