Selling Fashion As Art: How Luxury Brands Use “Heritage” Marketing To Convert Customers

The young woman standing in a queue is a walking billboard for about a half-dozen luxury brands, from her LV belt to her Gucci bag, not to mention a couple of barrettes in her hair that probably don’t come from Chanel but have the double-C logo. She’s not waiting in line to buy another luxury handbag, though, she’s actually waiting to buy a ticket to see a fashion exhibition on the late Alexander McQueen.

Only a few years ago, boosting attendance at museums was a heady challenge for curators, faced with a generation less accustomed to going to museums to “see a bunch of old paintings,” as one friend characterized it.

Until now.

Museums around the world are suddenly reaping the benefits of major funding from some of the world’s top fashion brands and developing flashy exhibitions designed to showcase their heritage. Last year’s McQueen show was a phenomenon all its own, drawing over 5 million visitors. On its last night the Metropolitan Museum, which mounted the exhibition, stayed open until midnight.

In Beijing, Louis Vuitton’s exhibition, “Voyages” at the National Museum in Tiananmen Square drew throngs who stood in line for hours to see iconic pieces from the archives, as well as some of the more sensationalistic concepts dreamed up for the brand’s nouveau riche clientele.

Quick on their heels are nearly a dozen other brands who have or will soon mount major exhibitions, including Ferragamo, Van Cleef and Arpels, Prada, Valentino, Jean Paul Gaultier, Dior, and Vivienne Westwood — all eager to boast of their esteemed heritage of craft and design. Many of these very same brands are opening their own museums. Louis Vuitton, for instance,  is currently building a massive space designed by Frank Gehry in the Bois de Boulogne and slated to open in 2013.

So how did fashion become such a sure bet for museums?

Thank technology and the Internet for bringing fashion to the masses, not to mention the scores of magazines that carefully note what each celebrity is wearing. Now more than ever, there is a hungry and educated audience for what once was the rarefied world of the very rich. The craft of haute couture and bespoke accessories has captured the imaginations of a public which now is even more keenly aware that the humble craftsman has become nearly obsolete. Ah, but luxury marketing tells us it is alive and well, with magical things seemingly made by magical elves. All for a less than magical price.  More importantly, now everyone knows that the ultimate status symbol is a something from one of the big 4 luxury brands: Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Hermes.

 Fashion exhibitions are essentially marketing exercises masquerading as high art — which is not to say that fashion is not art, however it is an art specifically designed with commerce in mind. Monet and Van Gogh didn’t paint pictures and think about how an exhibition might help extend their brand into tote bags and dentist office posters.

  In the retail business, we call them “heritage” exhibitions, which is a more dignified way of saying “we need a new vehicle to build our audience.” Exhibitions not only help communicate the brand story, they also showcase the signatures and trademarks that signify authenticity. In a world of counterfeits and knockoffs, that’s important.

“It is a way of speaking about the savoir faire, the creator, the house and its history,” explains Sydney Toledano, CEO of Christian Dior, in a recent New York Times article. The Dior exhibition in Russia was a huge hit with record-breaking attendance. “The 150,000 people who go to the Pushkin understand that Mr. Dior was an artist and that there is a way of contemplating the dresses with fine art.”

Fashion exhibitions also grant the hoi-polloi temporary access to a world they probably will never come in contact with while elevating the modest purchase of, say, a bottle of Chanel No. 5. It’s no secret that fragrance and cosmetic sales are key sales drivers for luxury brands, garnering more profit share than the sale of a dozen or so haute couture gowns.

More importantly though, these exhibitions bolster the image of luxury brands which tend to come under attack in harsh economic times – hence the sudden flurry of exhibitions in the past two years. An exhibition removes the context of social class and instead displays the more benign image of craftsman and designer.

But when is it “art” and when is it just a glorified advertisement? Who is truly the curator with such an exhibition and at what point is a commercial brand subject to the same scrutiny and criticism as any other retrospective exhibition of fine art?

It’s hard not to point fingers at Louis Vuitton, which has taken the heritage exhibition model and made it a major part of how it gathers its disciples together to worship — and shop — in its temples of luxury. Nowhere have they done that more than in China, but the rest of the world is just as much of a target.

A Vuitton exhibition of trunks and bespoke mallerie at Paris’s Carnavelet Museum drew over 60,000 visitors while one at the Shanghai World Expo saw an estimated 11 million visitors. Consider what the conversion rate might be for that oh-so-important Chinese customer — imagine how many ended up buying a bag or wallet after seeing that exhibition.

“Exhibitions give us the possibility to invent innovative ways of storytelling,” says Pietro Beccari, executive vice president at Louis Vuitton, quoted in a story for WWD. Storytelling, as many of you who read my blog know, is the foundation to great branding.

I would concur. An exhibition must have integrity and highlight a clearly defined focus that has weight regardless of who the designer or brand might be, and offer a view into the world of creativity, purposeful design, and the visionary mind of an artist and his material.

Read More: “Fashion’s Exhibitionist Streak,”WWD, 5/27/11;  “Is Fashion Really Museum Art?” New York Times 07/05/2011.

Upcoming Exhibitions:  “Louis Vuitton – Marc Jacobs,” 9 March – 16 September 2012. Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris.”The Fashion World of Jean-Paul Gaultier:From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk,” 24 March – 19 August 2012. De Young Museum San Francisco. “Van Cleef & Arpels: l’Art de la Haute Joallerie,” 20 September – 10 February 2013. Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris.

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