A very interesting crossover between the largest museum in America, an iconic brand and fashion media.
Ah, finally, the first Monday in May… Except it was the second Monday in September. Anna Wintour will have to thank Covid-19 for moving the famous Met Gala to this rather untraditional date. There are many things to say, good or bad, about the Met Gala and the intersection of art and fashion, and this year is no exception. But something that might have gone less noticed is the collaboration between the Museum and the newly-appointed LVMH strategic advisor, Virgil Abloh’s brand, Off-White. On September 10th, 2021, Virgil Abloh and The Met Store released a limited-edition capsule designed by the Louis Vuitton and Off-White creative director. Launched to celebrate the opening of the new Met’s Costume Institute exhibit “In America: A lexicon of fashion”, the partnership was presented on Instagram by Eva Chen, VP of Fashion Partnerships at Instagram in collaboration with Vogue, organizer of the opening ceremony of the above-mentioned fashion exhibition, the Met Gala. It is the first of a number of partnerships between the museum and American designers.
If Virgil Abloh is not creating anything new in terms of design in this collaboration featuring his classic Off-White bag, a shirt, a cap and a hoodie slammed with “Off-White x The Metropolitan Museum of Art”, he keeps pushing the boundaries between art and fashion powered by social media marketing. Virgil Abloh is often criticized for not adding anything to the table with the clothes he sends down the runway. If this is true, he certainly is a visionary in terms of marketing. He gets what people want to buy, why they want to buy it, and how they want to buy it. People want labels to affirm a sense of belonging performed on social media. He speaks to the cultural references of our society and elevates fashion to the rank of art presenting himself as an artist1. This clever all-encompassing marketing strategy is the key to Abloh’s well-deserved success.
Indeed, beyond the design, what sells is hype and visibility. By inscribing his designs into pop culture, sometimes in a literal fashion, (“For Walking” boots) Abloh speaks to the deepest most efficient mechanisms of human psychology. He creates readily understandable references to elements of American pop culture akin to what Warhol did with pop art in the second part of the 20th century. Furthermore, he gives it a unique, easily recognizable identity by conspicuously displaying the brand, so that the buyers show they have taste, a certain status, and belong to a certain community of “in the known” people.
This is magnified by digital communication and marketing. Although only 10 years old, Instagram has become the platform of choice for everything related to fashion and beauty. Established labels are efficiently leveraging the power of social media and the visibility the platform creates. Because the photo-sharing app was initially a platform to follow friends’ and family members’ life updates, it appears as a platform based on trust, enabling the rise of influencers. The power of influencer marketing is that people identify with the influencers and feel they can trust them, blurring the line between corporate marketing and peer advice.
Instagram has thoroughly revolutionized the way luxury and fashion marketing is done. From billboards and print magazines, brands are now pouring money into Instagram and TikTok. Vogue, the fashion bible, has reduced its staff count over the summer and put Anna Wintour, formerly head of Vogue US at the helm of Vogue global. Naturally, the diversity of visions and points of views featured at the artistic directions of the regional magazines is going to be reduced, hurting more and more the relevance of print magazines. By contrast, Instagram has expanded the number of points of view and given visibility to an increasing number of people by becoming one of the most diverse media outlets and the most fertile ground for digital marketing, dwarfing the digital versions of traditional print magazines. As expressed in a quote attributed to Warhol “In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes.” The future is now and Instagram is everyone’s fifteen minutes of fame. Alboh, as an artist, inscribes his work in Warhol’s legacy, beyond the work itself, he revolutionizes the medium.
So naturally, Vogue, formerly the principal fashion media outlet, can no longer be the only sponsor of the Met gala. Wintour still decides who gets in and who does not, but for how long more? The fact that The Metropolitan Museum of Art Store has started leveraging “Shopping on Instagram” to feature what might be its biggest fashion collaboration to date, shows that it has become an indispensable player of the fashion landscape, already well-established at the Gala. The Met struggles to remain relevant as a cultural institution and the Met Gala brings the largest amount of visibility and traffic to the museum, it is therefore critical to use the most efficient channel of communication, and Instagram is proving to be the one. Items from the collection sold out in a few hours.
Sources:
1. Virgil Abloh had several exhibition in established museums, among which this one, “Figures of Speech” in Boston. Accessed 17 Sept. 2021.
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