INTRODUCTION
In this visual essay, I will introduce two international luxury fashion brands. One will be an emerging brand and the other an existing brand. You will get to explore both journeys from both brands in regards to their history and present day developments. Within this presentation I will also cover their marketing strategies, their customers, their unique selling point and their vision. This will tie in with points made on PESTLE and the porter 5 factors.
WHY MOSCHINO?
Moschino as we all know it today, is recognised for its unique, innovative style. The label overtook fashion headlines with its rebellious, surrealist take on the fashion industry and very quickly it became famous for its originality and its innovation in its campaigns on raising awareness on important social issues.
Moschino was never shy of a controversial statement and often made jokes at the industry's "fashion victims" who were also, in fact his customers. His use of imagination and creativity of using pop culture and visual puns has really enhanced the way we look at what luxury couture fashion is today.
HISTORY
The man behind the label was Franco Moschino. Franco was born on February 27, 1950 in Abbiategrasso, italy, and sadly died on September 18, 1994 in Milan, at the age of just 44 years old, due to an aid-related death.
Franco’s father wanted him to work in the family business, however he wanted to pursue his love for fine art and therefore ran away to Milan and enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti where he studied from 1968 to 1971, supplementing his student budget with design and illustration commissions for fashion houses and magazines. Once he graduated he became an illustrator for Versace.
The brand launched when Moschino eventually left his job as Gianni Versace to create his own signature brand in 1983. He founded his own company called Moonshadow, the same year he launched Moschino Couture. Then lines such as love moschino, cheap and chic and moschino jeans later came. From this Moschino became famous for his eccentric designs and his social awareness campaigns in the early 1990s.
MOODBOARD
Attached below. From this visual representation of Moschino's identity, you can see that it is very creative, its very bold, along with indications of bursts of colour and eccentric prints. The brand itself is very tongue-and-cheek. Moschino was never shy of a controversial statement and often made jokes at the industry's "fashion victims" who were also, in fact his customers.
Despite the humour portrayed throughout the majority of his work, Moschino was in fact a superb tailorer. His ability to produce flattering clothing always shone through.
JEREMY SCOTT
Scott was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in a small farm house. He was full of imagination and fashion obsessed from a young age. Growing up Scott's sexual identity was difficult to convey, not so much for him but for others to around him, to understand and to just accept him. By looking different or seeing things in a different way, people approached it as a threat. Even to this day, as creative director for Moschino, which has always been an looked at as an “anarchist to fashion” brand anyway, Scott really brought a whole new energy to fashion culture using futuristic pop culture within the garments.
Scott describes himself not only as a designer but as an artist, a communicator, an icon. Ultimately he says he is a boy from a small farm with a big dream.
Before scott took on the role as creative director of the brand, Moschino lacked its youth and sense of humour. After Franco Moschino died the brand became more and more unnoticed, the pop cultural, humorous references began to fade, people were beginning to forget about the brand.
CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENTS
The brand picks up so much attention from its crazy, outrageous collections.
Celebrities such as Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus and Rihanna all gravitate towards Scott because of the bold statement.
However, since pulling it back in 2013, Celebrities such as Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus and Rihanna all gravitate towards Scott because of the bold statement - the clothes are guaranteed to be noticed. The clothes are to represent people being very expressive, forward and fully free, which is very empowering. Many people feel uncomfortable because it's way out of their comfort zone, it's not the typical black and chic which people expect to see in the fashion industry. Scott states that still to this day there is no designer that's turning fashion on its head and playing with brand perception.
USP: Price points, products, mascot - figure, celebrity endorsements and their clientele.
Both Franco Moschino and Jeremy Scott were outsiders to the main stream fashion system, yet were still fashionable in a strange, unique way. By being so different causes a huge impact, whether that's negative or positive, either way it's being talked about and that's better than not being talked about at all.
BRAND PHILOSOPHY
Moschino’s concept offers an alternative to the traditional fashion system as we know it, revealing a creativity that is more interested in transforming what exists rather than being a follower of the forever changing trends, resulting in having its own fashion trend. The brand expresses a new way of creativity by finding new combination of stylistic elements that conveys its vision of a disenchanted future. Every single collection translates joy and uses a concept of a lighthearted exciting story line which is to represent the enthusiasm and desire to express the problems both within women and men through their everyday life. Even though the label expresses contemporary fashion elements, Moschino has always stood apart from the other luxury brands which gives it its own personal rendition of fashion today.
Here is a few PESTLE points i'll let you all read.
Ill talk about the first one, so again talking about social media, with scotts heavy drug use 80s style collection - many people went against this as they thought it was influencing drugs and therefore the collection was taken out of luxury department stores. The brand gets a lot of negative articles written about Moskino, but as scott says better to be talked about then not talked about at all.
SWOT ANALYSIS
I created a swot analysis for moschino - mainly on what i know so far. looking at the strengths then, we know moschino has a very strong brand identity and uses innovation within its designs. Its weaknesses fall back on the people who speak negatively of the brand. Opportunities being new products and threats could be failure to keep up with its innovation.
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MEET BRUTA.
This is the emerging brand i have chosen. A quick overview of bruta then. So its a London-based fashion label which was founded by Arthur Yates in 2015. The label swiftly attracted a number of influential stockists, including Liberty and Dover Street Market. Yates had no formal fashion training but an artist’s background, therefore built his collections around art, culture and traditional crafts.
COMPANY OVERVIEW
This is the emerging brand i have chosen. A quick overview of bruta then. So its a London-based fashion label which was founded by Arthur Yates in 2015. The label swiftly attracted a number of influential stockists, including Liberty and Dover Street Market. Yates had no formal fashion training but an artist’s background, therefore built his collections around art, culture and traditional crafts.
HISTORY
Arthur's career in fashion began in 2008, he was only a teenager when he launched his own manufacturing company which involved producing jersey and denim apparel for the British high-street retailers such as Topshop, River Island and Asos. After several years of supplying high street brands with fast fashion along with maintaining regular art shows to showcase his paintings and sculptures, Yates decided to create his very own fashion label that would bring those two worlds together.
CREATION/VISION
Here iv just gathered a few illustration of yates first a/w 15 lineup. The initial Inspiration for Bruta came from the simplicity and seasonless nature of Savile Row tailors. Yates took inspiration from the designs that were timeless rather than trend-focused. His own unique adaption in his collection was to combine shirting and pottery.
Using Savile Row as a start point, he decided to undercut tradition by creating sharply-cut, gender-fluid shirts with colourful bunched flowers, and stitched graphic motifs along the collars and sleeves.
THEIR CUSTOMER
Brutas customer reflects both a young man and woman, caught between the old western era before the technological revolution. They can fully appreciate art for what it is. Their sense of style is not trend focused, it is individual and meaningful to their personality. This customer is not shy of money and will spend well on good quality, hand made garments.
ONLINE PLATFORMS
From observing Bruta from a personal point of view, The brand still remains an outsider to the modernised world of fashion. Their main target audience are often remote and individualistic. It indulges into fashion absurdities of art, culture and humanity. Their aim is to target a youthful generation with a sense of diversity and creativity. A statement from yates reads:
“My idea of luxury is to be inclusive and democratic. With Bruta we try and make clothes at an affordable price to allow our youthful customer to indulge in our world!”
The brands unique selling points cover their social media and its stockists. Bruta’s website reveals very modern in the sense that it is bold and ‘straight to the point’. It captivates visual elements such as art directed photographs and videography. It holds a very obsolescent, classical film characteristic to its online platform. Along with its main website, Bruta has several social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, however from observing these platforms, their identity appears unpopular. Their instagram currently holds 5,671 followers with a number of 50 - 200 likes for each post. Again with their Facebook home page, only 419 people like the account, which seems to indicate a lack of marketing and promotion. Although, despite the muted online platforms; because Bruta have several stockists in department stores around the world, the brand will more likely get more recognition and popularity this way. Despite this brutas recognition comes from its stockists in department stores around the world.
POTER'S 5 FORCES
Below you can see that i have began to look at the porter 5 forces. So the first one then is the supplier power. You can see that wholesalers and stockists play a huge part in yates small business. There revenue is currently split 70 to 30 percent across wholesale and e-commerce.
In an interview, yates stated how he is not wanting the business to continue growing and have hundreds of agents on different territory. Hes says how he wants only few stores and the rest is online where they can contact their customers directly.
For s/s17 yates talked about launching new product categories starting with overcoats and leather goods, however once this collection was released it was once again based on shirts, this portrays untrustworthy in the eyes of customers and failure to innovate.
A small client base could impact on the business more, being if it was a stand alone store and needed support, however through stockists it just supplies to those department stores without facing backlash of the customers.
SWOT ANALYSIS
For brutas swot analysis iv just outlined the obvious from what I have discussed so far. So one of their strengths would be that they have several stockists based around the world. A weakness shows that the brand has only a small client base. An opportunity would be to work on their social media platforms and a threat could be that potential competitors could take over their existence.
COMPARE
In comparison then. We can see that both founders for moschino and bruta came from a fine art background, both with the same views on mainstream fast fashion. Both brands use creativity and express themselves through the power of their garments. Neither moschino or yates followed the rules of the fashion industry. And both brands also have a very selective clientele.
CONTRAST
In contrast to that then we have seen that bruta has no intrest in expanding on the business and is happy to continue stocking through wholesalers, whereas moschino is an established brand world wide. Bruta lacks on their performance for their social media. And from moschino you can see that Jeremy Scott has a huge celebrity fan base which automatically increases the brands social media from Instagram.
CONCLUSION
So now that we have looked at the two brands. We can see their similarities in regards to their fine art backgrounds and their personality. Although they are similar in that respect their design processes and outcomes are completely different. Yates likes that Bruta is a small operated business that promotes itself through wholesalers, whereas Moschino is an established brand which uses the power of celebrity endorsements and social media to get its recognition.
