Miu Miu’s predominantly women-centric fashion hasn’t stopped it from encroaching into the men’s wardrobe. Those of us who lived through the 1990s may remember Miu Miu’s menswear line launched for the Spring/Summer 1999 season through to its final collection for Spring/Summer 2008. The brand has since sneakily relaunched menswear without explicitly calling it as such, but instead, began introducing a number of male models on the runway as well as offering select designs in a bigger range of sizes.
The quiet repositioning of the Miu Miu brand runs in tandem with its sneaker collaborations with New Balance. Also offered in slightly larger sizes—they go up to a IT46—each drop has progressively grown to be so coveted that they are sold out within hours on official launch days, despite the hype around sneakers no longer being what it was years ago. Miu Miu’s collaboration with Church’s that began for the Autumn/Winter 2023 season also followed suit.
The marketing strategy for Miu Miu has in turn, shifted to skew towards a genderless approach. Musician and actor Troye Sivan walked the Spring/Summer 2024 runway show, and in Singapore, the brand has expanded its roster of influencers to include those who identify as male.
As slow and steady (and subtle) as Miu Miu’s renaissance has been, it has undoubtedly worked to its favour. Like an unforgettable earworm, Miu Miu has grown to be at the top of consumers’ minds. The Lyst Index—a quarterly report of the “hottest” brands as tracked by fashion technology company Lyst—sees Miu Miu climbing up a rank, replacing sister brand Prada as the number one brand for the first quarter of 2024. It’s a stark contrast from two years ago when Miu Miu didn’t even make the list’s top 20. The brand only managed to crack the list for the last quarter of 2021 and has remained on it since.
The Lyst Index has grown to be an industry-accepted indicator of a luxury fashion brand’s popularity. The platform boasts at least 200 million users annually and is primarily used to search for fashion items across multiple e-commerce sites. Think of Lyst as the fashion equivalent of Skyscanner. A quick search on Lyst results in a seemingly endless number of, well, listings of the same item available on online stockists ranging from SSENSE to Harrods. This data is part of the information Lyst collects in order to form its quarterly The Lyst Index. Lyst also takes into account searches outside of its own platform as well as social media statistics for a more rounded view of consumer trends.
The reality is that the business of fashion isn’t a bubble contained to just how a product is moving or not. Much of a brand’s popularity is due to a combination of external factors as well. In the case of Miu Miu, its Spring/Summer 2022 collection became a kind of cultural phenomenon owed to its Noughties-inspired aesthetic of branded boxers peeking through the tiniest of bottoms. It became such a hit that the collection graced multiple editorial magazine covers and fashion spreads—the latter at times featured on hyper-masculine male models. For Halloween the year of the collection’s runway show, it became a viral sensation after recreations of the now-signature Miu Miu look made the rounds on social media.
Gucci’s ranking on The Lyst Index proves that sales figures don’t exactly maketh a brand’s popularity. The Italian fashion house maintains its 11th position on the list, buoyed by the campaign launch of creative director Sabato De Sarno’s first Ancora collection, his first menswear show in January, a Horsebit campaign featuring actor Kingsley Ben-Adir, and more. Lyst also notes a 10 per cent increase of searches (as compared to the previous quarter) for Gucci accessories among its users following the Autumn/Winter 2024 womenswear runway show in February.
However, financially, the figures tell a different story. Gucci parent company Kering Group reported an 18 per cent decline on Gucci’s revenue for the first quarter of 2024. Its revenue across its direct retail operations as well as its wholesale business both suffered a hit. At the same time, Kering Group proffers that De Sarno’s first collection (dropped from mid-February) “have been very well received, particularly in the ready-to-wear and shoes categories”—although it did not disclose the metric used to come to this conclusion.
The Lyst Index isn’t the only list that has cropped up over the years. Business of Fashion released its second The BoF Brand Magic Index co-created with data insights company Quilt.AI in May 2024. Unlike The Lyst Index’s more trend-driven metrics, The BoF Brand Magic Index identifies and ranks brands based on their impact on customers. It measures this based on three metrics—alignment (how clear a brand is to customers), engagement (how effective a brand is at inspiring customers), and intent (how effective a brand drives customers to search for it). Brands are ranked based on these individual metrics; the combined scores determine their overall ranking with the lowest total at the top. The report covers a six-month period from October 2023 to March 2024.
It’s not surprising that given the differing methodologies used in both reports, the results are different. The BoF Brand Magic Index determines the alignment metric by using Quilt.AI’s proprietary AI models that detects content by both brands and customers, categorising them based on 12 Jungian archetypes, and determine similarities between the two. It’s this consistency between brand and customer content that ranks Dior, Balmain and Tod’s as the top three for alignment—their brand values are being received and replicated by their target audience. Business of Fashion believes that “alignment is a leading indicator of commercial success” in the long-run.
Take it this way, there is reason why Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are two of the biggest musicians in the world right now. One can argue that the songs are not immediately addictive such that they would be stuck in a person’s head all the time, but the concepts and storytelling surrounding their albums draw people in. It’s this overarching narrative beyond the songs and lyrics that keep people talking and engaged. The same goes for luxury fashion. Fashion has grown to be more than just good, wearable design—how it’s being communicated and marketed play important roles on the success.
This is the reason why brands like Jacquemus and Loewe have constantly managed to be talked about both for their collections as well as the stories built around them. Jacquemus, for example, drives virality with its uniquely shaped products such as a literal Nike Swoosh crossbody bag and impossibly tiny bags that spawned a multitude of memes, while at the same time, working with artists to stir online conversations via eye-catching stunts. An eight-second clip in 2023 of vehicle-sized Jacquemus bags seen driving around Paris was so realistic (it was the work of a 3D artist) that it had people questioning if it was a real-life brand activation, because it felt pretty much in line with what Jacquemus would do.
Loewe’s consistent craft-centric approach to all it does translates exceptionally well on social media where it breaks down the make of an item—all without revealing too much of its in-house secrets—for all to witness. But at the same time, its constant dabble with the art world and surrealism allows it the freedom to not take itself too seriously. The brand has crafted a niche on TikTok where it works with content creators, giving them carte blanche to create content in their own vision. At the same time, its own campaigns aren’t typical product pushes, but instead rely on creative storytelling while embedding the collections into them.
Good design and storytelling are most often related although not necessarily so. As much as there are the Beyoncés and Taylor Swifts of the fashion world, there are the legends—the Mariah Careys, the U2s, and the Stevie Wonders that don’t necessarily partake in the hit-making agenda. Instead, they have built such strong legacies that they don’t have to market as much to be desirable. You’d go to a concert by these legendary musicians clamouring more for their best hits from decades ago than their newer releases. It’s not that the new songs are not great, but rather, the old ones carry such weight and are just so eternally beloved. And these legends were the blueprint of greatness at one point and have influenced generations after.
Hermès, Chanel and even Louis Vuitton are such brands. The latter is constantly on the top 20 of any list because it continues to enact creative change in the contemporary sense, but just like Hermès and Chanel, the Louis Vuitton name is already historically synonymous with luxury that the desirability is always top-of-mind. You don’t necessarily see Hermès and Chanel aiming to create viral content or use marketing gimmicks to draw attention—they’re just simply not on-brand.
There’s undoubtedly a need for fashion brands to be more all-rounded in their approach to create desirability in order to cut through the noise. We are living in a society where access to information is wide and getting hold of our attention increasingly becomes a difficult task as swiping through content after content has come to be almost second nature. The existing fandoms will stay for the new releases but it’s attracting a new audience to listen in and be part of the community that takes real work, especially for more contemporary brands.
Being at the top—whether it’s for the quarter or the half—is how one deciphers the position. Fashion moves at such a fast pace these days (even for luxury fashion) that the rankings can fluctuate quite dramatically. It means little to have a viral accessory or moment that spikes engagement and interest, unless a brand takes the step to develop the narrative further.
At the end of the day, it is consistency in both design and narrative that are key in creating any meaningful impact on a bigger scale and for a longer time. No brand wants to be a one-hit wonder; every brand wants an evergreen discography to bank on for years to come.
After almost two months since Walter Chiapponi's swansong at Tod's for its Spring/Summer 2024 women's runway show, the Italian brand has announced a successor. Matteo Tamburini has been given the creative reins and is set to make his debut in February to showcase Tod's Autumn/Winter 2024 women's collection. Tamburini comes from Bottega Veneta, where he has been working since 2017, first under the creative directorship of Tomas Maier.
And hours before Tod's made its announcement, Givenchy made public its decision to end its partnership with creative director Matthew M. Williams after three years. Williams is set to officially step down effective 1 January 2024, with his final efforts for the fashion house—the Pre-Autumn 2024 collections for both menswear and womenswear—scheduled to be unveiled this month. Expectedly, no successor has been named yet. The in-house design team is said to be filling in while a new creative head is officially confirmed. Williams joined Givenchy in 2020, succeeding Riccardo Tisci's 12-year run.
It's Maison Kitsuné's Parisian-meets-Japanese aesthetics combined with Samsonite's practical and functional travel companions. The Maison Kitsuné x Samsonite collection plays on the former's signature Camo Fox motif in two monochromatic renditions across a range of lifestyle and travel accessories. Highlights include a reworked version of Samsonite's Spinner 68 luggage—perfect for long trips—and a compact Crossbody bag made to be an indispensable daily accessory. Every piece in the collection also comes with a detachable charm.
The Maison Kitsuné x Samsonite collection is now available in Samsonite stores and online at samsonite.com.sg.
Ahead of the launch of the Spring/Summer 2024 collection by Kenzo, comes a special capsule collection with Japanese artist Verdy. A longtime friend of creative director Nigo, Verdy added his artistic, graphic expressions to the main Spring/Summer 2024 collection. The Kenzo x Verdy collection serves as a precursor with motifs—a number of Kenzo-branding reworked in Verdy's style—taken from the aforementioned collection and translated across a range of easy-to-wear staples rendered in muted colours.
The Kenzo x Verdy collection is now available on kenzo.com and in Kenzo boutiques from 4 December 2023.
...Dior Men. Just before Louis Vuitton held its first-ever runway show in Hong Kong this week, Dior Men made the announcement of its Fall 2024 runway location in the same city. The fashion house has already been making destination runway shows a constant endeavour, especially for its pre-collections with the latest held in Cairo in view of the Great Pyramids.
When it comes to profiling an actor like Keita Machida—to talk about how he got here, there’s no better place to start than, well, at the beginning.
In 1990, the Machidas welcomed baby Keita into the world. Little Keita grew up in a household filled with three generations of Machidas. As the only son, he was doted on (he has two sisters).
“I lived my early life running around in the woods,” Machida said. “I grew up with kendo (which is the Japanese martial art of swordfighting), baseball, swimming and many other sports.”
He was a precocious child, a bundle of energy that needed an outlet, and he found release in sports. Motion would be a constant theme in his life. How his body—a machine of blood, bone and flesh—could engage in the science of movement.
After passing the Dai 3kai Gekidan Exile audition, Machida became one of its members. That same year, he kickstarted his acting career on the stage in Rokudenashi Blues.
It was a rather circuitous journey to becoming an actor. “I think I was ultimately led down the acting path. If there wasn’t an opportunity, I would have forged a career on my own.”
When he’s not acting, Machida plays sandlot baseball and trains at the gym. He has also recently taken up golf. “I haven’t played video games for a while but before that, I used to play a lot of the Final Fantasy series and Ghost of Tsushima.”
Like many others, acting jobs slowed to a stop for Machida during the pandemic. With the country’s borders closed and being stuck indoors, Machida could return to the familiar source of comfort: watching TV programmes and films. “I watched movies and dramas incessantly,” Machida said. “It reminded me of the importance and happiness of the industry that I am in—creating works that people can consume and be entertained by. As a public figure, it’s important to feel gratitude for this and I want to perform as soon as it is possible.”
A youth spent glued to the screen (both big and small) seeded a desire to become an actor. Again, this might be how Machida is fascinated about what his body can do in the face of limitations. In this case, allowing himself to inhabit a character unlike his own.
From dramas to manga adaptations, in his 13-odd years of acting, Machida has amassed a massive portfolio. Regardless of the genre, he is attracted to multi-dimensional roles. To him, each role possesses its own unique difficulty.
One of the bigger productions that he has been involved in was Netflix’s Alice in Borderland. When asked about other manga adaptations that he wants to be part of, Machida said, “I know it’s difficult, both in terms of my age and the greatness of the original work, but I always wanted to play Mitsui from Slam Dunk. I’m always captivated by the charm of the character.
“In adapting an original work, I try to reflect the image of the original work as much as possible,” Machida said. In playing Karube in Alice in Borderland, Machida tapped on his character’s penchant for patterned shirts and chain necklaces. “Fashion is a very important tool of expression because it can be effective in bringing out a character’s inner self and personality.”
So what does it say about Machida’s own place in the fashion scene?
You can’t box Machida into a particular taste. It’s ever-evolving as he constantly gets fresh exposure to many different styles. He relies on his stylist Ishikawa Eiji for sartorial counsel.
“I’m always indebted to Ishikawa as he teaches me about the world of fashion.”
It’s paying off. Last year, Machida was appointed as a Friend of the Italian fashion house Tod’s. He didn’t think that Tod’s would approach him for the campaign. “I’ve always been interested in the brand but it inhabits a glamorous world in which I never thought I could be included.” But since his appointment, he likened it to an expedition to the museum: “I’m completely intrigued by it all.”
If there is a fashion accessory that he’s excited about it would be his Tod’s shoes. “I feel it’s important to have a good pair of shoes. The beautiful quality and comfort are wonderful,” Machida said, excitement hanging over every syllable. “Tod’s shoes give me confidence and are the key to any outfit.”
It’s a perfect summary. In the end, wherever you are, as long as you’re comfortable, that is a good place to be.
Photography: Chee Wei
Creative Direction and Styling: Izwan Abdullah
Hair and Makeup: Kohey
On-set Stylist: Eiji Ishikawa at TableRockStudio
