Ringing the start of Summer 2024, the Swedish brand CHIMI just released ‘Anticipation’, its collaboration with the French football player Paul Pogba. Together, they imagined a modern and edgy pair of sunglasses available in black and yellow, that can be customized with metal trims inspired by the athlete’s signature hairstyle.
Convicted in February 2024 for doping, Pogba, named the most expensive player ever in 2016 and hailed the best midfielder in the world, appealed the ruling and is exploring new creative endeavors with ‘Anticipation’. According to the brand, this collaboration is about “honoring the journey of life; the highs and lows, victories and setbacks” beyond the world of sports.
The campaign is the only filmed first-hand account from Pogba about the February 2024 ruling. It offers a glimpse into his state of mind, navigating success and failure through a visual tension between light and darkness. The vibrant yellow and the deep black of the two frames.
The brand, founded in 2016 by by Charlie Lindström and Daniel Djurdevic is resolutely modern with a hint of futurism. It embodies the minimalism of signature Scandinavian flair. According to Lindström, “CHIMI represents characters of all kinds and the duality within them“. The up and coming brand has been worn by the likes of Kylie Jenner or Hailey Bieber, and has collaborated with cultural figures such as The Gstaad Guy.
Notably, they collaborated with the Swedish rapper Yung Lean and the car manufacturer Koenigsegg last year, in a campaign inspired by motorsports. This marked their first foray into the world of top-level sports. Interestingly, this testifies of the growing interest of fashion brands for sports.
While artists and creatives have been signing ambassadorships with luxury and premium brands for years, athletes are a newer, relatively untapped, and massively growing category. CHIMI is not the only brand delving into the market.
Just to cite a few in the world of football, Megan Rapinoe collaborated with Loewe in 2020, Dior is dressing the Paris Saint Germain team since 2021, Kilian M’bappé is a Hublot ambassador since 2018, and Marcus Rashford and Burberry initiated a youth charity project in the UK aimed at empowering young people and providing them with resources for success.
Football is particularly interesting because it is undoubtedly the most popular sport at the global scale, and players are seen as true cultural icons. But this trend, of course, goes well beyond the world of football and started in the US with American football or basketball players collaborating with brands. Yet the arrival of luxury and premium brands is more recent and their ambitions go well beyond the US market, or a single market for that matter.
The LVMH sponsorship of the 2024 Paris Olympics testifies of a true industry shift covering all sports, at every level of fame. Lewis Hamilton was seen mingling at Paris Fashion Week while track star Alica Schmidt walked the runway for Hugo Boss at Milan Fashion Week and Prada dressed rising WNBA star Caitlin Stark.
In my opinion, this is symptomatic of the growing importance of entertainment in luxury. In our ever increasingly technological world, attention is the most precious currency, and luxury brands are ferociously fighting to attract consumers.
Saint Laurent is sponsoring films as parent company Kering’s owners invested in American Talent company Creative Artists Agency (CAA). On LVMH’s side, the appointment of Pharrell Williams as the creative director of its largest and biggest brand Louis Vuitton testifies of its willingness to extend the reach of its Maisons in all aspects of culture. In the words of Bernard Arnault “”Louis Vuitton is so much more than a fashion brand, it is a cultural brand with a global audience“. Needless to say, sports is culture.
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