by Eugene Rabkin
"If you read this publication chances are you own something from a collab, a shorthand term for a collaboration between two brands. The fact that there is a term “collab,” already speaks to the significance and omnipresence of collaborations. It seems like there are now at least several collaborations announced every week: Supreme x The North Face, Polo Ralph Lauren x Palace, Virgil Abloh x Everyone and Their Mother.
There is nothing wrong with collabs per se—a good collab can lead to a fresh take on a tried-and-true product, take a brand out of its comfort zone, and create something genuinely new. It can give a designer a chance to bring a honed perspective to another industry, or provide access to materials and means of production he or she otherwise wouldn’t have. Of course, collabs have become a vital source for one’s brand image and publicity. Even if collaborations don’t provide a major revenue source, they bring brand awareness and keep the marketing/publicity/media treadmill going. Not all of us may like it, but such is the consequence of our fast-paced consumerist world.
Many collaborations make sense for reasons outlined above. When for example, Junya Watanabe brings his brilliant deconstruction skills to a Levi’s product or Chitose Abe of Sacai to that of The North Face, or Craig Green and Kei Ninomiya bring their magic to Moncler, something worthwhile is born. When NEIGHBORHOOD collaborates with Dr. Martens, its biker ethos can be closely aligned with the ethos of Docs.
There are collaborations that are cringe-worthy in their pathetic attempt to chase the millennial customer—that elusive unicorn that’s responsible for a lot of anxiety in corporate boardrooms. But as the number of collaborations in the past couple of years have grown exponentially, they have become more and more indiscriminate, and sometimes downright absurd—an inevitable consequence when brands begin to run out of options.
The undisputed king here is Virgil Abloh, whose greatest achievement is to slap quotation marks on everything he can get his hands on. And these days he gets his hands on everything from IKEA furniture to Moet champagne."
Full article on Highsnobiety
"If you read this publication chances are you own something from a collab, a shorthand term for a collaboration between two brands. The fact that there is a term “collab,” already speaks to the significance and omnipresence of collaborations. It seems like there are now at least several collaborations announced every week: Supreme x The North Face, Polo Ralph Lauren x Palace, Virgil Abloh x Everyone and Their Mother.
There is nothing wrong with collabs per se—a good collab can lead to a fresh take on a tried-and-true product, take a brand out of its comfort zone, and create something genuinely new. It can give a designer a chance to bring a honed perspective to another industry, or provide access to materials and means of production he or she otherwise wouldn’t have. Of course, collabs have become a vital source for one’s brand image and publicity. Even if collaborations don’t provide a major revenue source, they bring brand awareness and keep the marketing/publicity/media treadmill going. Not all of us may like it, but such is the consequence of our fast-paced consumerist world.
Many collaborations make sense for reasons outlined above. When for example, Junya Watanabe brings his brilliant deconstruction skills to a Levi’s product or Chitose Abe of Sacai to that of The North Face, or Craig Green and Kei Ninomiya bring their magic to Moncler, something worthwhile is born. When NEIGHBORHOOD collaborates with Dr. Martens, its biker ethos can be closely aligned with the ethos of Docs.
There are collaborations that are cringe-worthy in their pathetic attempt to chase the millennial customer—that elusive unicorn that’s responsible for a lot of anxiety in corporate boardrooms. But as the number of collaborations in the past couple of years have grown exponentially, they have become more and more indiscriminate, and sometimes downright absurd—an inevitable consequence when brands begin to run out of options.
The undisputed king here is Virgil Abloh, whose greatest achievement is to slap quotation marks on everything he can get his hands on. And these days he gets his hands on everything from IKEA furniture to Moet champagne."
Full article on Highsnobiety
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