Fragments Nº8: Does Running Errands In A Calfskin 990b Count As Quiet Luxury?
Collaborations As Trades And The Exquisiteness Of Taste
Hello all.
August is the worst when you’re waiting.
While they say patience is a virtue, sometimes it can be a vice. So, about halfway through the month, as days in Provence sped away in the rearview mirror, I decided (foolhardily maybe?) to take the foot off the gas and give my brain the time out.
I’ve enjoyed pulling these fragments together for the value of thought that I hope it brings to readers and the mental exercise it creates. WHY does something work? WHAT could be more interesting about it? HOW does it interconnect? Ultimately, Fragments are nothing without their greater whole - their context (to quote the next president of the United States) matters.
To that end, some housekeeping: As of now, I have availability from mid-September. If you’d like to chat about your brand challenge or marketing proposition or think of exciting ways to get to market, then message me here.
With that, onto the fragments…
What’s $1500 divided by 990 multiplied by a thousand?
As I got an E in math(s) at GCSE, I don’t know the mathematical answer, but I do know these are the three key numbers that make up the new Loro Piana and New Balance tie-up.
This collaboration has struck a nerve. Is it another sign of New Balance’s renewed relevance or a needless step down from the undisputed icon of ‘quiet luxury’?
I’ve tried looking at collaborations through another prism. That of trades. Specficially NBA trades.
A collaboration is many things. A PR driver, a marketing strategy, a business decision, and a commercial necessity. Yet at it’s heart, it’s a trade between two partners. Trades, like in sports, are not simply an exchange of players (or ideas, in this case). They are exchanges of value, and different goals drive those exchanges and their ultimate success.
A great trade delivers the objective of both teams, but most trades are not created equal. One side can get fleeced if they’re not careful because their needs are more significant than the trading partner's. A dynamic seen most recently in the Balenciaga & Under Armor collab. Balenciaga, understanding the lopsided dynamic of the trade, metaphorically fleeced them. Giving them what amounted to the dregs at the back of the showroom and sticking a logo on it. The collaboration made the partner who wanted the collaboration more (Under Armour) poorer. Creating downstream effects for other long-term trading partners.
The NBA is littered with trades where one partner understands the dynamics better than the other, leveraging their needs (short-term thinking, desperation, new owners, etc.….) to gain the advantage. These butterfly effects can last years and alter the course of franchises.
The more trade logic you apply to collaborations, the more brands can consider the risks/benefits of the tie-up. In this context, no one wants to be the Brooklyn Nets.
So what about Loro Piana and New Balance?
This isn’t Loro Piana’s first trade—collaborating with Fragement in 2022 and, most recently, ROA for their gorp-core partnership. It continues what right now amounts to the expansion of Loro Piana from simply a luxury fashion brand to a luxury materials brand. A luxury materials brand is not only a fashion brand, but it’s an object brand, turning everything into ‘quiet luxury’ through the integration of its material ideas first.
This naturally opens up many more doors than simply more sweaters, trousers, and shoes (to be glib). For a brand already with sales of €1.6B, it keeps the commercial wheels greased. The trade value, therefore, is tied up in the ability to take ‘ordinary’ objects and make them Loro Piana. Much like working with Gorpcore brands is surprising, so is working with the maker of the dad shoe.
For New Balance, the trade value is in a continued focus on elevation to go alongside the design shifts the brand has made at taking its Made In America premium concept and pushing up the perceived value of the design and construction of the shoe. (Those weird loafers don’t count).
With fierce competition in the market, especially from ON and Hoka, let alone Nike and Adidas, trading for further long-term brand elevation makes sense, with minimal downside for both parties. New Balance's other trades with Miu Miu et al. keep the brand surprising and elevated - the ‘Made In’ moniker, almost expanding in scope and creativity. With sales already underway for Loro Piana VIP customers, the collaboration is sure to sell out, but digging deeper than the surface objectives of sales and buzz can unpick the long-term brand value of collaborations. Like the LOEWE x On collab, both sides of the trade are thinking long-term rather than short-term.
This rhetorical device helps guide how to consider and assess other collaborations, not just for New Balance but for brands at large. I’ve got a breakdown of the different types of collaboration trades coming in the next few weeks.
Opus
Ryuichi Sakamoto was always an artist with a deep, profound grasp of his life and its frailty. After passing away from cancer in 2022, his estate released his funeral playlist (which I wrote about here, and you can listen to here). His last film and last project were called Opus. Quite literally, a man facing down death and having the chance to put a definitive full stop on a career and a life.
While that might seem quite heavy, Opus, both the film and the subsequent soundtrack, offers a beautiful journey into Sakamoto's oeuvre.
One of the things that always stood out about his work was the song's ability to morph and shift in the context it was presented. His most famous composition, ‘Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’, perfectly reflects this sensibility. In 2009’s Playing The Piano is spare, gentle, and contemplative; you can almost feel the keys being played. While in its Playing The Orchestra form, the grandeur of the melody comes to the forefront. Same song, a different primary emotion. At the same time, its original form allows the electronic accompaniment to create a spacey, otherworldly form.
It’s fitting that this is the penultimate song and, therefore, the second to last song played in his life. In opus, its pace slows almost down to a procession, as if each key and note played matters more and more. It’s beautiful, it’s heartbreaking. It’s wonderful. A dive into the stunning depth and breadth of Sakamoto’s work will not leave you gasping for air.
Sakamoto had a long and fruitful relationship with fashion and luxury brands. Not only was ‘Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence’ a fashion show favorite, but he also collaborated with brands in typically thoughtful and nuanced ways. His partnership with Krug in 2008 is simply stunning. Listen here.
Styling An Ideal
The George Cortina-styled GQ piece for George Clooney and Brad Pitt was a masterclass in shaping modern masculinity for older men. Cortina has a flair for the small details that make everything feel aspirational and attainable. It doesn’t feel forced or needy. He’s got that man about town, bon vivant quality that translates into the styling. It’s also clearly going to be a one-and-done for the promotion of the film, ‘Wolves’, as just after the release of this editorial, basically shelved it for a streaming-only release.
Cortina has his hands in many pies. Society of the Spectacle favourite Jacques Marie Mage recently dropped their second collaboration with Cortina and was resident at large at another SotS favourite, Chateau Marmont. (This GQ editorial from the wastelands of 2020 was a highlight). As ever, those with great taste stand out.
Consider yourself gatekept:
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Not all references are created equal
Karl Lagerfeld’s library / photostudio is an absolute reference-head’s valhalla. Dal Choda for Wallpaper goes digging around 7L, and comes away with this all-time quote from the space’s curator/keeper of the flame Laurence Delamare.
7L is a ‘living projection of Karl Lagerfeld’s mind’. Here, some 33,000 titles are organised without hierarchy or pomposity. ‘Karl used to tell me that reading the catalogue of an exhibition is often more beneficial than visiting it. “Books are sufficient to themselves,” he would say. “They ask for nothing and they are silently patient, but they are always there for you”.’
Let that last part sink in. ‘Silently patient’. So true.
This is why physical media, whether it be books, records, CDsthe , DVDs, BlurRays, Magazines matter. You just never know what delight it brings back to you. Right now, I’m going page by page through a book called Labyrinth: British Jazz On Record 1960-75. A completisits list of 1960s and 70s British Jazz albums. Not only is each page a delight, but you can take the time to discover the albums. It’s non-phone, non social dopamine discovery and it’s glorious.
OASIS BONUS SECTION
Because of course. Not only did I write about from the point of view of brands (yes they will work adjacent to it, and already have in the case of Levis and Umbro), but it’s struck a true cultural nerve, not just in the UK but here. Chric Black’s take for GQ is great, as are the following pieces:
Liam Gallagher’s Haircuts: Rated.
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The case for ‘Be Here Now’ as Oasis’ best album, is both ludicrous and logical. I listened back to the expanded edition (with the Mustique demos from 1996) and stripped back, you can see that the songs were all there. In fact they’re more consistent and cohesive as a form. The snippets of samples are interesting, and there’s a ridiculous level of joy coarsing through it. (Even though the making of the album itself was clearly troubled). The Quietus, which I adore for it’s true deep form of music criticism, has the goods here. I particuarly loved this quote:
The record starts like a classic western, the prodigal son stepping alone from a train at dawn, returning to the hometown that hadn’t paid him much mind before he’d moved away to seek fame and fortune and build a name for himself. ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’ kicks on from there, Noel spinning a very personal narrative out of the same yarn he’d been using for years – deliberately open-to-interpretation framing devices, phrases lifted from The Beatles, Dylan and Sam Cooke, deliberate lack of precision as a means to achieving wider resonance – but by this point the process had passed beyond pastiche and become his signature. You can understand why some people may not care for it, but to dismiss it as empty betrays a lack of imagination and attention.
Be Here Now intersected with my own teenage ears opening out to a wider palette of music, the album reflects a similar opening out of a pallete, and while seeing the band at Wembley do ‘the classics’ will be electric, it’s easy to get lost in the myth that Be Here Now was crap. It wasn’t.
More next week.