Are Fashion Brands Truly Taking Advantage of the Binge-Watching Era?
If you have been on Tiktok for a while you probably saw a post similar to this one. (I can’t add Tiktok videos here, sorry! to watch you have to click on the video):
- This is me after watching one episode of Emily in Paris.
- This is me after watching two episodes of Emily in Paris,
- This is me after watching five episodes of Emily in Paris,
- Ah, C’est moi après une saison à Emily in Paris
In this case, it was about the Netflix series Emily in Paris. But there are similar short videos circulating on social media about The Queen’s Gambit, Bridgeton, Euphoria, and many other series and movies that became popular recently. This demonstrates that many people watching these series get fashion inspiration from them, which let’s be honest, is nothing new.
I remember trying to dress like Serena from Gossip Girl when I was a teenager. Fashion brands have been taking advantage of the influence cinema and TV have on people for a long time. One of the most well-known strategies to do so was product placement. But I believe this new streaming revolution presents a new opportunity for brands to not only dress characters but become part of the story. This got me thinking if fashion brands are not missing some major opportunities to take a more active part in the current streaming revolution. With Covid-19, fashion brands have been creating video content like never before, but the influence of these doesn’t even get close to other content creations. Maybe Fenty X Savage show on Amazon Prime can teach many brands a lesson. Is fashion truly exploring the profitable universe of streaming?
Fashion Is Part of the Narrative
The costume is a tool to build a character, a way to say things about a protagonist without having to actually put it into words.
To illustrate this better, let’s take the classic Sex and the City. Each protagonist had a style and wore clothes that talked about their personalities. Charlotte, for example, was the traditionalist of the group, which becomes clear from her conservative and very feminine outfits. Miranda was an independent career woman, and her androgynous, no-bullshit closet demonstrated that. Samantha’s and Carrie’s styles also reflected their personality. But more interesting than having the style of the protagonists visually expanding their personalities, is that the fashion evolved with the characters.
Let’s analyse how Miranda’s style reflected her evolution throughout the series. She started the series as a very rational woman, especially when it came to relationships, she wasn’t necessarily looking for love and she was just fine on her own. Her style reflected that with androgynous looks, full of tailored office-like sets and practical dresses for more relaxing moments. The colours were usually sober or very strong, while few light fabrics were seen. At the end of the show and in the movies, she is still independent, but she softens a little while growing into her role as a mother and a partner. The style grows with her, softening a bit to a lovely power-female icon. Pastel colours started to appear more and more and breezy blouses and dresses were introduced. This happened gradually, from the moment she became a mother to when she welcomed her partner into her life for good. Her story was also told through the fashion she wore, it was part of the narrative — something even the show’s stylist stated.
This is a narrative tool used very often at many different shows and movies. Just think about how many makeover montages you have seen. Characters changing their looks — including clothes — to the sound of a fun song so it becomes extremely clear there are changes in the story and their personalities taking place. Or every time that a style evolution marked another change in the story. For example, when Andy working on her style meant she was doing better at her job at the magazine at The Devil Wears Prada.
Or when, on Mean Girls, Cady went from not owning any pink clothes to dressing like a “plastic: to show how she changed throughout the movie. In the end, she settles on a middle term, demonstrating she found a balance between the home-schooled girl and the toxic high school popular kid. Fashion is an important part of telling a story that is everywhere in movies and tv series. Thus, it is only natural that brands found a way to profit from this.
Product Placement
You could say fashion has always taken advantage of the strong narratives and well build characters of series and cinema by using an effective and old advertising tool: product placement. This method consists of basically inserting your product in a scene in a way that makes watchers desire the product. Having products placed in movies can result in major returns to a fashion label. During the pandemic, this became even more true, since we were all stuck at home binge-watching something. Even series such as Emily in Paris that had mixed reviews from television and fashion critics had some impact. Plenty of viewers ended up pinning images of Lilly Collins wearing Chanel, Kenzo, and Y/Project on Pinterest.
Euphoria is an example of series that had a massive impact on fashion. The make-ups might have been the most talked-about visual feature of the show, but the style of the character Maddy made a lot of noise too. In fact, the Miaou and I am Gia sets the actress Alexa Demi wore for this character were so popular that people ran to google to search for them. According to data from Google, searches of “Maddy from Euphoria outfits” and “I am Gia purple set” spiked since the series premiered in June 2019. To this day, the former search is a breakout term people keep looking for on Google.
Some brands pay to have a character wearing their pieces, especially if the name of the brand will somehow be mentioned (Gossip Girl and Sex and the City for example would drop brand names quite often). But usually, these brands don’t pay directly to the media production to be featured. Other times they don’t pay at all, because product placement can happen in many different ways. The truth is that there are no restrictive rules when it comes to product placement.
The new Gossip Girl series, for instance, hasn’t even started and is already making noise with its product placements. The images released of the new cast sitting on the MET stairs had the actress Jordan Alexander wearing cream kitten heel boots that went viral online. The Brazilian brand Schutz, which made the pair, took advantage of the noise this product placement made by posting the images on its social media profiles. The company’s PR team did a good job and soon magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue were telling readers where to get the cream boots themselves. Since then, Schutz had to restock the pieces many times. It sounds like a successful paid product placement, right? Yes, except that it was not paid.
Schutz didn’t pay to be featured at the upcoming show. Instead, for years, the Brazilian label had been building a relationship with the costume designer of both the original Gossip Girl and its reboot, Eric Daman. Thus, to have this product placement, Schutz didn’t spend money directly on the show production. But the label certainly did financially invest in keeping a relationship with this costume designer, and others that may still bring a return. It is a long-term strategy and investment rather than a specific advertisement.
Ultimately, the relationship with costume designers is the best way to insert a label in a movie or show. Arianne Phillips, an experienced costume designer that worked in movies such as “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” and “Nocturnal Animals” explained to BOF that she usually works with vintage sources or costume rental houses to create a production’s wardrobe. However, sometimes she sees a necessity to create something from scratch herself or work with a designer. For Phillips, this relationship with other designer is always a co-creation, rather than a sales pitch:
“I’ll look at a lookbook and see if I respond to it, but I think that personal connection to the costume designer from the [brand’s] designer, that would be the way to get my attention. (…) A big luxury house [will] say, ‘we’ll give you this bag only if it gets mentioned [in the show.]’ I don’t like to play those games.”
The contemporary fashion brand Veronica Beard has a different approach to get featured in the series. It invites stylists to its showroom to shop with friends and family discounts. The high-impact but wearable pieces of the label make for believable outfits for shows such as Billions, The Bold Type, and Emily in Paris.
Sometimes, lucky brands don’t even know their pieces will be featured in a production. They discover the product placement at the same time as the public: while watching movies or series. Sometimes and they are not even featured but still get marketing from it. Confused? Let me explain.
Take the example of Rowing Blazer, a prep revival brand that had been working for two years to bring back Princess Diana’s famous black sheep sweater with its original makers, Joanna Osborne and Sally Muir, founders of Warm & Wonderful. The whole marketing plan and campaigns were already planned when they had a very pleasant surprise. Netflix release of the fourth season of the Crown had its Princess Diana wearing a replica of the iconic sweater. Even though Rowing Blazer was not exactly featured at the show, the label shared the scenes of the Crown. Soon, The New Yorker and Today’s Show website repassed the story to their viewers, mentioning the reissued style by Rowing Blazer. Not long after, the sweater sold out.
So, it is clear that product placement is probably one of the best forms of exposure a fashion brand can have, especially during a pandemic. The fact that costume designers usually feature clothes that will match the story rather than their pockets might be what makes it so effective. Maybe, seeing garments merged with a charismatic or interesting character in whom we see a little of ourselves is what makes it so catchy. Regardless, I couldn’t help but wonder (as Carrie Bradshaw would say): shouldn’t fashion brands try to be even more part of movies and series narratives?
Making a Brand Part of the Story
I read this very interesting opinion article by Brian Phillips published on Business of Fashion that talked about how fashion brands are missing the Netflix revolution. This paragraph of Phillips’ article pretty much summarized the whole message:
“Every year like clockwork, major brands collectively spend billions of dollars on marketing. But despite the scale of these investments and contracts with big-name talent, they rarely capitalise on the power of durable entertainment content that can drive impact for more than a few days and are missing out on the incredible growth of streaming platforms from Netflix to Amazon Prime.”
Indeed, especially since the pandemic started, fashion labels have been creating short films at cinematographic levels. They’ve been hiring major celebrities — including actors — to feature at their productions. They’ve been dressing a whole cast with beyond beautiful creations in order to release one single collection to the world. Of course, this type of production helps to build a brand’s image, but usually, their impact doesn’t last for very long and, once a new collection needs to be released, it becomes old and meaningless content to watch. However, what if this level of investment and commitment on telling a story around fashion went to series and movies that will keep relevant for many seasons to come?
An example Phillips gives is Emily in Paris. Yes, we all saw she owned many Chanel pieces — even though that didn’t make much sense in the story. But what if, instead of working in a fictional PR agency in Paris, she was working at Chanel? What if the French label could insert itself in the plot and send a message about the company’s values, aspirations, and craftsmanship throughout the series? Wouldn’t that perhaps be more efficient in terms of brand exposure and building an image than an extremely expensive fashion show that, because it was the pandemic, only a dozen people attended?
I know, many questions. But I agree with Brian Phillips that there is too much potential being wasted. “The Queen’s Gambit”, a Netflix series about chess, skyrocket chess sets’ sales and online chess sessions, according to The New York Times. Now imagine creating a series around a product or style a specific brand wishes to push.
Wouldn’t we watch the story of a Chanel-fitting model and her Parisian lifestyle? Or maybe a TV series about a wunderkind nose who creates scents for Guerlain and can smell the future (that one was Phillips’ idea). Of course, fashion brands would have to partner with entertainment production companies, not only to expand the budget but to create narratives that send the brands’ messages and resonate with audiences.
A brand that didn’t exactly insert itself in a larger narrative but did find a way to enter the streaming era with success was Savage X Fenty. Rihanna’s lingerie label partnered with Amazon Prime to release its show that was more about entertainment than clothes. The pieces from the last season of Savage X Fenty might not be available anymore, but the show is still catchy. It also still adds to the brand’s overall image of inclusion and seductiveness. To accomplish something similar, or even more eternal, brands would have to stop thinking only about the next collection and open up to a more long-term type of exposure. Yes, and all this started with a TikTok trend I saw. Would very much prefer to see the evolution of style in the actual series of Emily in Paris than on a short-video social media, preferably mixed with even more of the fashion world.
