What’s with Fashion’s Mood for Realism?
After a period dominated by glamorous, utopian campaigns, designer fashion brands have been embracing the banality of the everyday lately.
If you’re reading this, it means you love fashion (either that or you’re my mom). And if you love fashion, you couldn’t have missed the paparazzade orchestrated by Bottega Veneta for its Pre-Spring 2024 collection, a few months ago. Breaking with the usual codes of fashion iconography, it created a viral sensation.
Called Readymade as a nod to Marcel Duchamp, a master at elevating the ordinary, the campaign documented ‘candid’ moments in the daily lives of A$AP Rocky and Kendall Jenner. The pictures, taken by professional paparazzi, were first published in gossip outlets like TMZ and People, as any other celebrity sneak shots. Before Bottega Veneta stamped its logo on them, no one had suspected their marketing intent. Genius (though Yeezy used the exact same approach for Season 6 back in 2018).
A bit earlier, Jenner had already starred in a tabloid-like campaign for Gucci, running through an airport with monogrammed luggage and her man Bad Bunny (are they still together? Very interested in this info).
Both Bottega Veneta and Gucci continued down the realistic road recently. Bottega Veneta with its photography series Portraits of Fatherhood, glimpsing into A$AP Rocky’s privacy with his sons. Gucci with its We Will Always Have London film, featuring Debbie Harry and Kelsey Lu and shot by the legendary Nan Goldin, known for immortalizing intimate fragments of life.
The two Italian houses are not the only ones to lean into the mundane. A slew of fashion labels has taken the same path lately. Not always with famous faces.
Blurring the lines between the real and the illusory, this kind of voyeuristic approach evokes the mechanisms of another cultural production: reality TV, which similarly uses fiction or narrative to simulate actual life. That’s where the term reality advertising comes into play.
Reality advertising celebrates triviality in all its beauty and poetry. Here, the infra-ordinary serves the extra-ordinary. Within real environments, the subjects (celebrities, models or regular people) are ‘caught’ running errands, riding public transport, chilling, living life – sometimes through a lo-fi lens, for a more authentic feel. They usually don’t openly pose or look at the camera, to create the illusion of a stolen moment. The products, meanwhile, are naturally integrated into these everyday scenes, as mere details of the story.
Self-projection is easier when intentionality and artifice are hidden behind an apparent spontaneity.
While in the wake of the pandemic, consumers were seeking to escape from reality, they’re now demanding familiarity. With the ongoing economic fragility and decline in purchasing power, depicting realistic worlds has become critical. At the same time, in a space saturated with glamorous, flawless images, supported by ever-new illusion tools and techniques, people increasingly advocate authenticity. Enough with the pompous, the ultra-polished and the glitz.
Embracing mundanity and rawness, rather than negating or airbrushing reality, allows relatability. It creates a sense of connection, that fosters engagement and bonding. Especially with the younger generations. Those called Y and Z want to feel seen, included and connected to brands that reflect the world they live in.
A few years ago, as I interviewed Simon Porte Jacquemus for YARD, I remember him telling me: “You might not be able to buy my pieces, but you can understand the universe and feel part of it.” Luxury fashion is, by nature, everything but approachable. It’s expensive and exclusive and sacred. Yet, being open and comprehensible to various age and social groups is essential for staying relevant today.
Reducing the symbolic distance with the masses doesn’t mean levelling down. In fact, when well-crafted, it can elevate: through expanding the number of one’s worshippers, one can become a religion – otherwise, one remains a sect*.
When I think of reality-based content, Sam Youkilis’ work immediately comes to mind. The photographer/filmmaker has pushed a new form of storytelling, defined by iPhone-shot short documentary videos, immersing into instinctive moments from ordinary life. For Summer 2024, Aimé Leon Dore used visually-similar mini clips, without any branded product, as a complement to more typical and glossy shots. A means of emerging from a purely mercantile logic, setting up a singular atmosphere, telling a complete story. Before the New York label, Jacquemus, Pucci and Vivienne Westwood had collaborated with Youkilis himself. Capturing real people in an amateur style, with a discreet and/or suggested brand presence, this type of images is seen as genuine and credible, driven by a testimonial vocation. Designed for social media, it appears organically in feeds, as part of the general conversation.
Consumers’ crave for realness also led to the resurgence of minimalist beauty. Natural features and imperfections are more and more highlighted, rather than camouflaged. See Pamela Anderson for Proenza Schouler Spring 2024, Viktorija Bauzyte for LOEWE Fall/Winter 2024 women’s precollection, or Addison Rae for Petra Collins’ I’m Sorry Drop 4. “I wanted to see skin, I wanted to keep Addison’s pimples and sunburn. Everything is so tightened up and cleaned up and filtered [today].” shares Collins with Dazed.
Ironically, realism tends to raise more desirability than extravaganza. Still, designer fashion brands must be aware of avoiding boredom and preserving the aspirational dimension that forms their core. Their consumers expect authenticity, but also fantasy – they need both to relate and to dream. So, how to find the right balance?
I see four main ways (that can be combined):
· Alternating between lifelike and fancier content
· Crafting compelling everyday stories
· Adding a whimsical/surrealist touch to real-life sceneries, as Jacquemus or creative duo Shadrinsky often do
· Offering aspirational realities thanks to beautiful imagery, nice settings and/or famous faces
Continuing to inspire while opening up to the secular world is as delicate as necessary. That sweet spot is key. If you lose your luster, you lose everything.
By Marine Desnoue.
*I’m pretty sure I read this religious analogy in Luxe Oblige by Vincent Bastien and Jean-Noël Kapferer.
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