In an age of more severe polarization and more overloaded and fragmented information, the more active the community culture that resonates with the collective and brings together people of different cultural backgrounds and value orientations. It seems that the era of individualism has passed, and the era of making waves and making noises has quietly arrived.
Recently, LVMH Luxury Ventures, an investment arm of the LVMH Group, announced the acquisition of a minority stake in the American fashion brand Aimé Leon Dore.
This clothing brand that presents a hint of college style streetwear has a large number of loyal and enthusiastic fans. As a young fashion brand, Aimé Leon Dore captures Some of New York's most avant-garde trends. Founded in Queens in 2014, Aimé Leon Dore fired its first shots with a collaboration with sports brand New Balance shoes, whose clothing design is modeled on New York's urban culture and draws heavily on the hip-hop and basketball culture of the 1990s. LVMH's investment in Aimé Leon Dore exemplifies the luxury empire's determination to expand its retail footprint around the world and its ambition to deeply connect with today's young consumers.
Aimé Leon Dore
The same move was made by Sequoia Capital, a leader in Chinese investment institutions. Following its investment in Ami and Ssense last year, it made its latest fashion investment, recently announcing an undisclosed acquisition of South Korean brand We11done, created in 2015 by Jessica (Hyejin) Jung and Dami Kwon, who are influential in The Korean fashion scene. This collaboration not only illustrates We11done's attempt to accelerate the growth of its consumer-facing business in the Chinese market and its expertise in technology and retail by leveraging Sequoia Capital's local and global network in China, but also sequoia Capital's ambition to strengthen its fashion portfolio.
We11done Spring/Summer 2022 Collection
There is no doubt that the brand values of Aimé Leon Dore and We11done are being recognized by the luxury market and even the wider fashion market, stemming from the strong community forces gathered behind the brand.
Teddy Santis, the founder of Aimé Leon Dore, is a well-established brand operator, yet he runs a fashion brand in the opposite way that the established luxury brand creates eye-catching big-event marketing strategies. On the contrary, it is closer to a long-term well-planned, silent communication method that continues to attract young consumers.
Teddy Santis
In today's age of brands, Gen Z consumers, social networks, and new ideas, Aimé Leon Dore has one trait that sets it apart: authenticity. The brand's founder, the soul of the brand, Santis, grew up forming the DNA of the Aimé brand – music, street culture and lifestyle. The brand's Instagram account has nearly 500,000 followers, but Saints' own account rarely posts content, mostly with simple emoji as the title, interspersed with Lookbook images officially released by Aimé Leon Dore.
Since the brand's inception in 2014, Aimé Leon Dore's blueprint for a combination of new pop and traditional elements has captivated a cult following and fashion fan. Everyone is attracted by the diversity of the characteristics represented by this brand. Some fans appreciate its simple and timeless DNA as it combines functional streetwear with must-have items for young school consumers, while many are impressed by Santis' impressive array of collaborations with brands such as Kith, New Era, Timberland, Woolrich, Drake's and New Balance over the years. This series of collaborations infuses the modern New Yorker style with a touch of Queens-only coolness that has been Santis' own experience and a unique regional icon for today's trendy enthusiasts.
The success of Aimé Leon Dore illustrates that building the community scene of a brand's audience and focusing on its cultural development is a vital pillar of a fashion brand, and it's the best place to connect with consumers. In the field of streetwear, the community has always played a very important role, whether it is a community of geographical concepts, a community of loyal followers of each brand, or a community of streetwear enthusiasts in a broader sense. The community has become the backbone of the field of street culture, the non-mass nature of the culture itself makes the brand leaders of the street culture community and the lovers and promoters of street culture connect with each other, come together, and promote the maturity and development of this community, the best case of this phenomenon is the trend culture media HYPEBEAST, from the initial blog to the present, it is the result of the continuous expansion of its community.
Before the rise of social networks like Instagram, forums such as NikeTalk, BapeTalk, Strictly Supreme, and ISS/Sole Collector were community hubs for streetwear enthusiasts, where streetwear culture emphasized its democratic nature —people who wear clothes can spontaneously and democratically decide what is coolest, and the rights of any ordinary person are as great as those in the fashion industry. In the early days, such an idea was centered on the dissemination of street culture leaders, and as part of youth culture, these "leaders" guided more cultural identities to consume in the context of maintaining close ties with other niche cultural communities such as music and art.
Although these forums have now disappeared, this pattern of community communication has remained to this day, and with the rise of social media, this leading relationship has been amplified. Consumers rely on leaders, brands, and media platforms on the Internet to create and deliver information, and express their cultural recognition by following, liking, sharing, and finally placing orders to buy.
Community culture first came from the geopolitical community, taking the trendy neighborhoods around the world as an example, such as Fairfax in Los Angeles, SOHO in New York, Shoreditch and SOHO in London, and Riharajuku in Tokyo, etc. Geography has always been an important part and the foundation of the original establishment of community culture. On this basis, it is important for each community to create a unique culture based on the values of sharing and inclusion, while upholding the belief in mutual understanding and respect. There is also such a community culture in China, and the community cultures of Shanghai and Beijing have a relatively long history, and they are also mixed and complex, from the underground in the 1990s to the surface today. Shenzhen's community culture is relatively more modern and young.
Fairfax neighborhood
However, with the continuous development of the Internet and the impact of the global epidemic, the restrictions brought by geopolitical factors are also being broken by the development of community culture. Artists, fashion designers, writers and other cultural creators from all over the world are enriching different communities through their personal attributes, making each community culture unique and irreproducible. This makes online communities a new social paradigm. For example, in recent years, more and more brands have joined the online release model, and through the use of VR, AR and other technologies to create a virtual reality, through immersive experience for people to bring a better brand culture experience. In a way, this is the embodiment of the increasing democratization of the fashion industry and the streetwear industry.
In addition, we can also see activities such as Virgil Abloh, founder of the off-white brand and the late Louis Vuitton menswear creative director, participating in online courses and dialogues at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Prada's online show brand designers and fashion design students from all over the world, and other activities, luxury brands are providing more and more opportunities for communication with brand consumers through digital means. This means that greater use of digital communication methods and the convergence of online crowds are providing opportunities for luxury goods to build communities and spread brand culture.
Virgil Abloh
Communities that break through crowds, geographies, and karma, and spontaneously gather because of common interests are the essence of today's social communities. Different from the members of the same community who have similar or even the same identity, discourse system and behavior habits, the community generated by the network is a social cluster in the virtual space, which is a new type of space for people to interact and communicate under the popularization of social networks.
The interaction based on interest has spawned new interpersonal communication, identity construction and cultural identity, and the social community born from it, with interests, emotions and values as the core, has become an indispensable and important component of the fragmented socialization of young consumers, which has both the flat freedom of the Internet era and the cohesion of traditional communities, which is relatively closed and easy to produce the effect of virus transmission. The Fun Community has long been proven to be an important driving force for consumption transformation.
Driven by fragmented social interactions, young people's consumption patterns are also changing, and being planted with KOLs that belong to the "same kind" of people or likes as them is the first step in buying. Young people are impulsively consuming because of their interests, and they are also establishing circles through consumption. Not to mention, the best way to prolong consumption satisfaction is to share after the fact, based on the consumption of grass based on the same thing, bringing a supreme sense of identity and satisfaction. Young social methods have achieved online and offline integration from channels, so it is not impossible to further transfer from people to things or "brands" in social objects.
At this time, the brand's "human design" is particularly important, and it is a "circle" road to create a differentiated persona as much as possible without deviating from the original positioning of the brand. Personalized labels are spreading into a unique lifestyle culture and influence, unique values, hobbies and preferences, is the way young people express themselves, they like to talk to leaders in their fields of interest and follow their consumption decisions, the brand's differentiated label into an online community is the beginning of luxury to capture the hearts of young consumers. WWD
Written by Jayne Wei Wenlu
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