Recently, FILA announced the appointment of Lev Tanju, founder of Palace Skateboards, as the creative director of its new branch line FILA+.
Regarding this appointment, Lev Tanju mentioned in a statement: “FILA has a rich and amazing history of more than 100 years. I am shocked by the brand’s huge archives and I love every piece in it. The story of Pierluigi Rolando Promoting innovation and groundbreaking progress really inspires me. I also like the entire FILA Italian team. They are very sincere and like a family.” It is not difficult to see from the statement and the promotional materials that have been released that Lev Tanju is very There is a high probability that it will start with FILA’s Archive shoes and clothing, and combine Italian traditional elements as the core design to create a more high-end series.
Puma
In addition, there have been many similar appointments since 2023: Martine Rose was appointed as the first guest creative director of Clarks Originals; Crocs appointed Salehe Bembury as the creative director of the Pollex Pod series; PUMA hired A$AP Rocky to become a PUMA-F1 partner The outerwear brand Napapijri announced British fashion designer Christopher Raeburn as the global creative director; Verdy became the creative director of Budweiser Japan; the jersey brand Mitchell & Ness appointed Don C as the brand’s new creative director.
This kind of operation mode, which is similar to that of fashion houses looking for creative directors, is increasingly happening to brands of a certain scale, with sports brands accounting for the largest proportion. Creative people and independent designers from the street have a deeper cooperation model with brands, and they are able to enter the inside of these companies.
Among them, one of the most successful examples is the cooperation between Kiko Kostadinov and ASICS, where both parties achieve each other’s success.
Akiharu Ichikawa/Hypebeast
In 2016, ASICS began to invite the then fledgling Kiko Kostadinov to cooperate. After two years of formal cooperation, the two parties announced at the end of 2020 that they would switch to a long-term cooperation. Kiko Kostadinov’s team worked hand in hand with ASICS designers to provide design and style planning and guidance for a variety of men’s and women’s shoes in the ASICS SportStyle series. It is suggested that on the basis of the high quality of the existing ASICS SportStyle sports and leisure series products, it will bring a new spark that is different from the past. In 2023, the two parties will enter the next chapter and work together to create a new clothing series called “ASICS NOVALIS”.
Unlike most collaborations, Kiko Kostadinov was given greater freedom with this series. When launching their first collaboration, Kiko shared: “They wanted to find a partner in the fashion industry, and I found it very interesting that ASICS had never done a similar collaboration in the field of professional running shoes. This means that there is no precedent for our cooperation. You can imitate, but you need to study the opportunities for combination during the cooperation process to ensure that running shoes can be combined with fashion. Moreover, we can directly give you a shoe model with other companies and say, “We want to promote this pair of shoes. In this pair of shoes ASICS really allows you to do whatever you want. When there are 200 pairs of shoes for you to choose from and design, you really think you can push something. The only pity is that we You can’t really create a new model because it takes three years to develop a pair of functional sneakers.”
Asics Novalis
It’s not just Kiko Kostadinov and ASICS. Jerry Lorenzo has developed a long-term cooperative relationship with adidas to provide global creative and business strategy support for adidas Basketball; Teddy Santis, the manager of Aimé Leon Dore, will take over as the creative director of New Balance MADE in USA in 2022; the street brand is managed by Kyle Ng Brain Dead joins hands with sports fashion brand Oakley to restart its “Oakley Factory Team” innovation laboratory.
In the current cooperation model, how to protect the creativity and ideas of creative directors has become the key. Brands need to give up more say and allocate more resources to have a chance to reap greater benefits. This is naturally deeper than joint cooperation.
Adidas/Hypebeast Exclusive
Looking back over the past 20 years, this method of attracting partners did not just appear quietly in recent years. The original prototype may be traced back to Japan, where fashion culture is at its peak.
In 2002, adidas invited Yohji Yamamoto to jointly create Y-3, injecting fashion into sports style and integrating adidas’ innovative technology with Yamamoto’s strong style. It has been in operation for 20 years.
In 2003, the Goldwin Group, which owns The North Face in Japan, teamed up with its designer Eiichiro Honma, the manager of nanamica, to launch the Purple Label series in Japan (equivalent to the creative director of the series), which successfully affected the Japanese ecology and even touched people’s hearts. To the world’s trendy fashion ecology.
In 2010, BURTON and Hiroshi Fujiwara jointly created the Japanese branch AK457 and served as the creative director. Unfortunately, this series is still quite niche due to its limited positioning.
In 2014, Acronym manager Errolson Hugh was invited to lead the returning Nike ACG design team, creating a glorious moment for the Nike ACG series and making avant-garde functional clothing deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
Chris Tang/Intelligence
There are successful cases, but there are also unsuccessful cases. In 2019, Kerby Jean-Raymond, the head of Pyer Moss, served as the artistic director of Reebok Studies__ and was promoted to the creative director of Reebok six months later. However, just 18 months later, he announced his resignation from this position.
In addition, while learning from the fashion house model, sports brands have also turned their attention to fashion weeks. In 2018, FILA held its first fashion show in the 107-year history of the brand at Milan Fashion Week, and became the first sports brand to appear on the official schedule of Milan Fashion Week; in the same year, Li Ning’s sports fashion series China Li Ning appeared in New York Fashion Week has since become a frequent visitor to international fashion weeks.
Whether it is fashion houses that have adopted the “creative director” model early on, or sports brands that adopt this model now, it is also a “draft” among the most popular designers at the moment, and its biggest purpose is All of them inject new vitality into the brand.
Furthermore, for sports brands that are larger in scale and have a wider audience, creative directors will shoulder the expectations of these influential consumers in the “upper levels of the pyramid” and use their own strength to combine with the brand to leverage more mass consumers, thus becoming an important role in the entire industry and market.
