This article is from WeChat public account: LADYMAX (ID: lmfashionnews) , author: Drizzie, FIG head source: IC photo
In 2017, Supreme and Louis Vuitton launched a landmark joint series
I have to mention that Logo has been alienated as a premium and status symbol for luxury brands.
A Uniqlo ordinary T-shirt is 79 yuan, but a luxury brand T-shirt with Logo can sell for 5,000 yuan. The Logo has become the second price tag of the product, and is synonymous with the status and economic strength of the luxury owner. Christopher Sanderson, founder of The Future Laboratory, a London-based trend prediction company, also said that in the 1980s, the logo was a symbol of ambition, status and wealth. The rise of hip-hop culture in the 90’s brought African Americans’ worship and logo back to mainstream fashion culture.
After the trend in 2018 became clear, in 2019, the luxury goods industry experienced a consistent pace of brand replacement, which caused the industry’s uneasiness. A luxury brand logo replacement comparison chart was once widely spread on social media. Luxury brands, including Burberry, Berluti, Balmain, Rimowa and other brands, followed the pace of Calvin Klein and Saint Laurent and changed their logo in 2019. According to the monitoring of fashion business news, 10 brands changed their logos last year.
Burberry, Berluti, and Balmain and other brand logos are highly homogeneous after replacement
The trend of boldly changing the brand image can be traced back to Saint Laurent under the leadership of Hedi Slimane. In 2014, LVMH’s Loewe also changed the logo and new packaging under the direction of creative director Jonathan Anderson. It is also considered a classic classic refurbished classic Case. However, unlike the previous successful cases of Saint Laurent and Loewe, the new logos launched by luxury brands in 2019 are surprisingly similar. Mostly use sans-serif fonts, all capital letters, and reduce kerning . Even Dior changed the logo on all occasions and products to all uppercase without official publicity.
From a visual point of view, the concise and superfluous fonts really convey a more powerful message, which can grab consumers’ attention in the shortest time. The younger generation who grew up in the Internet age are more familiar with standardized fonts than the ancient handwritten swashes and serif fonts in the era of print media.
In addition, the basic motivation for replacing the logo includes, but is not limited to, Intentionally different from the brand in the past, showing the market’s determination to change, making the brand image more consistent with the current aesthetics and its own business, and bringing a freshness to the market . Others believe that the replacement of the Logo by the new creative director is also a manifestation of sworn power.
But analysts have expressed concern about the luxury brand’s move to replace Logo. Behind the change of logos of luxury brands is increased brand anxiety. Although the new logo allows luxury brands to catch up with the young trendy ride, this ride is not necessarily the end of the brand’s long-term development.
The real enthusiasm for replacing Logo is fast-moving consumer goods and Internet companies, but luxury goods is a time-settling business. The reconstruction of brand image can not be established overnight, but the brand image is falling quickly. Changing the logo brand can only create some freshness, but it is fleeting. When more and more brands follow the trend and change the logo, the freshness will also become aesthetic fatigue.
The former logo was “shame”
When people are tired of a trend, it means it is not far from being outdated. The luxury industry may be coming to such aInflection point. The consequence of the logo frenzy in the 1990s was that consumers were not interested in logos in the 10 years from the beginning of 2000 to the 2008 economic crisis.
Compared to the current enthusiasm for logos, people were ashamed of luxury logos. In particular, some affluent consumers believe that showing off their wealth when the middle-income group is losing income is an unworthy behavior. After the economic crisis, many people chose to return to a simple and rational way of life, with little interest in publicity.
According to a data monitor, in 2014 and in other parts of the world, the interest in logos and obvious wealth display was low. Quality, scarcity and authenticity became the reasons for Chinese consumers’ luxury consumption. According to a report by the Washington Post in 2015, some consumers think that luxury handbags “look a little worthless, and it would be better to be more exquisite.”
Experts say more and more consumers prefer unique products, rather than high-resolution luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Prada. There are also fashion reviews saying that high-end consumers will buy luxury high heels, but they hope that this pair of shoes is the most versatile and conservative style at the moment and will not become obsolete with changes in fashion trends.
At the time, industry insiders said that researchers had classified Louis Vuitton’s trademark from hidden to prominent into 7 levels, with level 1 being the most hidden and level 7 being the most prominent. The results show that for every level of Louis Vuitton’s trademark increase, the price drops by $ 43.9. In luxury brands, the more expensive the single product logo, the more hidden it is.
On the one hand, this change comes from the respect of personal taste and personalization of high-end fashion at that time. On the other hand, the pessimistic income outlook has also led to more cautious luxury purchases. And affluent consumers worry that luxury handbags are too obvious, giving a cheesy impression. Sarah Quinlan, director of consumer insights research at MasterCard Advisors, said she has clearly observed that people are reluctant to reveal money.
The Richemont Group CEO Johann Rupert said at the time, “Rich people are no longer willing to show off. This is something that really keeps me up at night.” Charles Lawry, assistant professor of luxury market research at Pace University said at the time, Consumers feel guilty about buying luxury products with a logo, and they don’t want to brag about what they buy. “
This consumer mentality happens to accompany the crazy expansion of luxury giants in the first 15 years of the 21st century. These onesBrands have moved from their original European base camps to emerging markets such as China, the United States, and small European cities, quickly growing the market size at the cost of overexposure and brand value dilution.
In those years, the luxury business was not easy to do. In 2014, Gucci’s turnover fell 1.1%, Prada’s turnover fell 1.5%, and it said it would reduce the number of store expansions. Sales growth in the LVMH fashion and leather goods divisions has also slowed.
According to Euromonitor data, despite the steady growth of the entire luxury goods market after the recession period, several leading luxury brands have entered a difficult period. June Haynes, a luxury retail consultant and former Valentino executive, said at the time that consumers were starting to focus more on low-key luxury. As the US economy gradually recovers from the recession, high-income consumers have basically achieved an increase in wealth, but low- and middle-income consumers have not.
At that time, the Chinese luxury goods market limited the purchasing power of luxury goods on the one hand due to the contraction of consumption. On the other hand, emerging wealthy consumers continued to broaden their horizons and improve their tastes, and were no longer satisfied with superficial luxury logos.
Under the influence of various factors, the trend of fashion has entered the stage of minimalism, and the “de-logo” movement of luxury brands has become a trend .
According to the 2014 Google Fashion Search Trend, The fashion keyword with the highest search volume is Normcore . This comes from the English normal (normal) and hardcore (hard core) The derived vocabulary of span> shows people’s bias towards essence and reason. The style is interpreted as the main purpose of “ deliberately monotonous and non-characteristic “. While reducing the brand recognition, let your dressing be in a mundane and free style. status.
Celine in the Phoebe Philo era has become the representative of the Normcore trend
Celine in the era of Phoebe Philo has become synonymous with Normcore. From 2009 to 2017, she was the creative director of Celine. She advocates that luxury must not be sacrificed to comfort. It does not want women to be sacrificed to fashion, let alone women to show through naked Own sexy. More importantly, Celine never highlights the logo in its products.
The Normcore trend has quickly swept the industry because the imitation threshold is too low and the replication is too strong. Up to luxury brands, down to fast fashion brands are blowing the wind. However, in the eyes of consumers, a luxury brand white shirt without decoration is no different from a fast fashion brand, making it difficult for luxury brands to create a premium and distinguish them from low-end brands. This also caused this trend to be quickly abandoned after the industry was “crippled.”
The turning point is 2014. Gucci’s new CEO, Marco Bizzarri, has officially brought the luxury logo back to the fashion world .
Marco Bizzarri gave a speech titled “Is the Logo Age Really Over?” at the New York Times International Luxury Conference. He believes that “logo fatigue” is a topic worthy of extensive discussion, but he does not agree that a death sentence for the logo era should be set now.
He said that the logo is an indispensable part of the brand. The so-called eternity does not mean that time is still, but it is interpreted in a contemporary way. For Gucci, double Gs are like hieroglyphs, they are the most appropriate symbol of the brand. “After months of declining performance, the Chinese have started buying Gucci again. No one is ashamed of having a double G belt.”
Gucci plays an important role in bringing logos back to the fashion world
Marco Bizzarri took over Gucci in January 2015. At that time, the brand had fallen for two years and fell into a trough of performance. He boldly appointed Gucci accessory designer Alessandro Michele as the creative director, and worked closely with the overall revival of Gucci.
In the summer of 2016, Gucci’s double G belt, logo printed handbag and iconic red and green stripes became the object of people’s competition. Gucci’s “rejuvenation” legend also affected subsequent bold subversion with the group’s Balenciaga, which, under the leadership of Vetements founder Demna Gvasalia, switched from traditional high fashion houses to street culture, taking the limelight in the frenzy of logo .
Return to the desire for simplicity and simplicity?
Gucci ’s prolificism and publicity drive its sales revenue from 3.5 billion euros in 2014 to 9.6 billion in 2019. Five years of enthusiasm is rare in the fashion industry, which has always liked the old and the new.
Since last year, however, the market has grown weary of dazzling aesthetics and noisy street trends. With the ebb of extreme romanticism, Gucci has made visible changes in the creative style. In recent seasons, it is more classic and minimalistic than before, and the Baroque style has been moderately weakened.
Morgan Stanley analyst Edouard Aubin also asked questions about the business logic behind the style change at the Gucci parent company Kering Group’s 2019 earnings report. Kering Group Chairman Franois-Henri Pinault confirmed that the change of style is not just a reaction to Alessandro Michele’s creative thinking change, but his cooperation with the Gucci sales team. Note that sales are specifically mentioned here. .
On the other hand, the rising of Bottega Veneta, a subsidiary of Kering Group, represents the return of minimalism.