Social media marketing strategies from Jonathan Anderson to Gucci are utilizing meme culture to speak to Gen-z who enjoy post-irony.
From Naomi Campbell lip-syncing Charli XCX’s 360 alongside “Tube girl” on Tik Tok to Miranda Priestley, fictional editor of “Devil Wears Prada” attending Balenciaga’s latest Paris couture show (an uncanny transformation by make-up artist Alexis Stone), there is currently a trend in fashion to use unserious and often playful marketing tactics to gage the viewer.
Recently, with the advent of Tik Tok, internet culture and their respective subcultures, luxury fashion brands and creators are utilising memes to drive social media shares and engagement. The fashion industry has always celebrated the development of cultural phenomena and ideas, and so, it is no surprise that some brands have taken to using memes as a form of guerrilla advertising. In their use of memes, the fashion brand is seemingly attempting to bridge the distance between itself and the consumer, as if to say, ‘We share similar thoughts, beliefs and ideas.’ In short, hashtag relatable.
When it comes to brand identity on social media, the luxury market, in particular, has its work cut out for it. Balancing a majority Gen Z audience on TikTok while maintaining authority (and oftentimes, self-seriousness) as a storied label can create some murky territory for dealing with Zoomers.
Some brands have massively succeeded in their attempts, such as Loewe that has harnessed the niche corners of the internet for its own gain. Poking fun at the “Is it cake?” videos that plague Instagram’s ‘For You’ pages, Loewe showed its signature bags alongside amateur cake re-creations, inviting users to guess which was real. Ahead of the 2024 Met Gala, the Spanish house invited its guests to participate in the “passing the phone” challenge. Asking celebrities to participate in a trend that everyone can do shows an innate social media fluency and creates a feeling of access to celebrities.
Loewe are relatively new to jump onto the meme trend, but they do have the younger collaborations, like the Spirited Away capsule with filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, that have resonated with fans of the Japanese animation studio.
From Sao Paulo to Tokyo, Loewe’s growing store presence attempts to connect with the local consumer through emphasising regional craft. For their latest Chengdu store opening, Loewe commissioned Sarabande artist, Zongbo Jiang to create a digital art installation, 3/N – Chengdu Kaleidoscope that aims to “reach a wider viewership to understand these traditional cultures and crafts in different and interesting ways”.
A well-executed example of meme marketing and engaging comes from Gucci, under Creative Director Alessandro Michele. For the launch of Le Marché des Merveilles watch collection, the luxury house unleashed a viral, meme-centric social media campaign, involving a group of prolific social media creators creating quick-witted memes around the phrase ‘That Feeling When Gucci’ or #TFWGucci. Not only did the campaign use the classic (DIY-looking) meme layout, varied and well-considered visuals and witty captions, but it resembled memes you might find scrolling through your feed. There was an element of surprise upon discovering it was actually a Gucci campaign, and that’s what worked.
However sometimes, attempts to connect with a younger audience fall flat. In an effort to market its Ricco bag, Alexander Wang recently hired celebrity impersonators to unbox the purse. But the supercut of faux Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Kylie Jenner, and Beyoncé created inherent associations with fakeness. On social media, reactions were largely negative. “Yikes,” one user commented. “Tried a Marc Jacobs move but executed it very fittingly for Alexander Wang. Hang up the towel.”
The trend towards humour in fashion first started online in the slow return to normalcy that followed the lockdowns of 2020. If you read the first viral fashion items of the decade like tarot cards, a clear message emerges: Irony is very much in.
Praying, a brand that brings a tongue-and-cheek spin to contemporary ready-to-wear, gained notoriety in 2021 with unhinged designs that ranged from a hat declaring its wearer “God’s Favorite” to a half-joking, half-earnest fashion homage to Twilight that sold out even after several restocks.
Even Praying’s marketing emphasises this sarcastic edge. Their e-commerce site is reminiscent of a low-fi Geocities fansite, an aesthetic that has worked for other buzzy brands like Online Ceramics. Their Instagram feed masterfully merges fact and fiction in a way that’s almost impossible to discern. Some fabricated images include a paparazzi shot of Lindsay Lohan wearing Prayings’s “Holy Trinity” white bikini that reads “Father” and “Son” on the cups and “Holy Ghost” on the crotch; a yearbook photo of Paris Hilton wearing a shirt that reads “You Matter/Don’t Give Up;” and Adam Sandler in full Praying gear, toting their Twilight fan bag.
Memes aren’t a new cultural phenomenon, but luxury fashion houses, in a move to freshen their online images, are opting for relatability over exclusivity by embracing irreverence and humour on social media. It’s a marked shift, as these brands are utilising data analytics, offered by social media to forge long-lasting relationships with luxury’s next generation of consumers.
