Celebrity/Retailer Collaborations

With the slowly recovering economy consumers are less willing to spend their money on high-end designer fashions.  This decrease of purchasing designer goods has caused a loss in sales revenue for designers as well as restricting the accessibility of designer pieces for those who can no longer afford to spend a lot of money on them.  Fashion designers and retailers have come up with various collaborations in order to offer consumers high end fashions at affordable prices.  Such collaborations offer designers a chance to create new collections while giving consumers the chance to score designer pieces that fit within their budget. 

H&M is a huge supporter of designer collaborations for which the fashion savvy are willing to wait outside stores in lines for house just to be able to have a piece of the collection.  Shoppers go crazy for collaborations at H&M, for example a near riot broke out in Paris outside the store for the Sonia Rykiel knitwear collection.

Topshop is another retailer that offers designer and celebrity collaborations.  One of their most popular collections is by celebrity model Kate Moss, who does a line of her own for the store.  Many stores such as Macy's, Payless and Target are offering designer lines at more accessible prices for their consumers.

Reflection:

We think that designer collaborations are a great thing.  They bring high end fashion that seem inaccessible to the everyday North American consumer, to stores that the average consumer shops at.  Collaborations allow designers to make collections, and in turn receive a percentage of sales. This boosts their revenue helping them to continue creating their runway collections.  The retailers benefit from the collaborations as well, the designer helps draw large crowds to their store which results in huge profits. So both the retailers and designers are benefiting from collaborations, as well as consumers.  Consumers who can afford to can continue buying straight from the runway, and those who cannot afford to can buy and support their favourite department store and designer at the same time.  

Although most celebrity designer collections are successful, there are a few celebrities who have failed tremendously.  A perfect example of this is Lindsay Lohan's 2009 collaboration with Emanuel Ungaro.  She was even made artistic advisor, although she has no experience or knowledge of the workings of the fashion industry.  The result of this collection was a catastrophe, with fashion critics ripping apart the collection. This proves that celebrity does not qualify a person to help design a collection.  Just because Lindsay has been photographed wearing designer clothing does not make her a designer herself.  We think that if a retailer is looking for a celebrity to collaborate with, they should make sure the celebrity has knowledge of fashion and some experience in order for the collaboration to be successful.

Sources:

http://www.realstylenetwork.com/index.php/fashion-and-style/2010/03/fashion-news-retailerfashion-designer-collaborations/

http://blog.zap2it.com/thedishrag/2009/10/fashion-critics-rip-lindsay-lohans-ungaro-collection-to-shreds.html