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2022 and the return of collaborations
Different in meaning but no less interesting
Fashion
May 12th, 2022
May 12th, 2022
It is difficult to find in the fashion world something as important as transversal as collabo, a spurious term used in recent years to indicate the now consolidated practice of collaborations between brands. If in a first phase their role was to create a bridge between different realities, Supreme and Louis Vuitton make the idea well, with the progressive "end" of hypeculture collaborations have assumed the status of a simple exercise of style, ending up losing their original meaning and gradually turning into a practice almost annoying. If you had lost hope though, these first five months of 2022 seem to have given collaborations a new luster, giving us from January to now the first little joys of 2022. Waiting for the release of the collection between adidas and Balenciaga, a relative of the upcoming collaboration between Gucci and the German brand, luxury has once again sunk its teeth into the streetwear world in one of the best collabo staged by Supreme, which has found in Burberry the perfect partner to recreate the magic now lost for years.
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We have already talked about the work of Tisci and Jebbia, but that of luxury brands committed to collaborate with streetwear and sportswear seems to have become a pattern that, in addition to the examples already mentioned, gave us at the beginning of the year also the Prada and adidas collabo while, albeit with a lesser idea of luxury, dates back to a few weeks ago that between Palace and Calvin Klein. But what is the point of a collaboration today? It's hard to say, but it probably wouldn't be wrong to indicate that one of the new meanings found over time is that of a lifesaver for all those brands and companies in difficulty, those desperately looking for a stroke of genius to regain the right relevance on the market. Gap knows it well, that with the collabo with Yeezy first and then with Balenciaga, is slowly climbing the charts in the online approval rating, but Guess knows it well too, that a few months ago announced the arrival of a collection created by Eli Russell Linnetz, who with his ERL has become one of the favorite brands of Kanye West and Justin Bieber. It's a different story for those collaborations that, after the interest for the big names of streetwear, have begun to create synergies with smaller brands, but no less important.
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It's easy to mention Aimé Leon Dore and New Balance, a pair that has now become a security, but recently the Boston brand has scored another collaboration, the one with Ganni, the same who had collaborated with Juicy Couture, which in turn years ago had joined forces with Vetements. Something different, however, is what happened in another area, that of watches, where Omega and Swatch have created a tsunami capable of upsetting both the world of watch enthusiasts and that of the resell, not used to anything like this after years in which, past that eagerness to have the latest sneaker at any cost, you could no longer see long lines outside the store. If a return of hypeculture is to be excluded a priori, consumption has changed radically compared to a few years ago, the new era of collaborations has opened the door to a new imagery, different from the original one but able to create the same feverish anticipation of the past.
