Let’s Capsule!
We often hear about partnerships between brands of the fashion industry. Deals, licenses, special collaborations that are initialed everyday. But what is a partnership? It is a consensual marriage of short duration. The reasons that lead two or more brands to join in the realization of a common creative product can be of different and depend on more than a thousand factors.
Tricker’s & Roy Roger’s
One brand is more related to sportswear and another one is closer to the luxury business. Other times one of the two has a great product but needs to modernize and improve its image. In some situations the partnership occurs simply for advertising and commercial purposes. And many others are formed to accost two companies, which until then had lived perched in their ivory towers of success. In very simplistic terms, it happens now between two fashion companies what happened not more than 60-70 years ago for some marriages of the European ruling class: a family put his prestigious title of nobility, and the other, generally belonging to the new entrepreneurial bourgeois class, the money.
Junya Watanabe & Comme des Garcons & Puma
The precious fruit of these partnerships is often contained in collections not larger than ten extra exclusive pieces, called “capsule collections”. Famous examples of understanding the strategic strength of an artistic collaboration in a limited edition are for example the capsule collection created by Junya Watanabe for the capsule-crazed Comme des Garcons and Puma, or the nine models of shoes made by Yohji Yamamoto for Salvatore Ferragamo, tattoo artist Scott Campbell‘s art on Pirelli tires and on the Pzero Dainese leather and carbon jacket, or the highly limited edition of 60 Super sunglasses made together with 10 Corso Como to celebrate their success in Seoul; partnerships concluded between a big fashion brand and a designer that does not belong to the entourage of the House, a celebrity or a personality worthy of note in the contemporary art scene.
Yohji Yamamoto & Salvatore Ferragamo
Super & 10 Corso Como
In partnerships, also happens – rarely, because otherwise it would lose value – that they occur between two brands with a creative imagination accompanied by a great history, with a very similar kind of customer type. As an example Tricker’s and Roy Roger’s, two brands that besides the possessive in the name, share long traditions of craftsmanship, success and high standards of quality and elegance of product, combining the quality and refined image of Tricker’s with the world of denim of Roy Roger’s.In this case, as in only few others, we can speak of “ad hoc” partnership, an union made like from the offspring of equally high ranked families.
Capsule collections are a way to communicate a vision, the direction where the companies intend to move forward. But also for customers is a great honor to buy the rare pieces of their favorite brands, a unique product that sum up two or more ideas as well as prestigious heritages. Secondly, the parallel markets have no interest in copying something that will not be sold on a large scale. In a period in which everything is reproducible in the time of a snap, something so special needs more attention and more resources to be spent on its realization. Hard job for counterfeiters, good sound for consumers and producers.
