Part 1: Modern Basics
Over the past decade, the luxury and premium retail segments have been performing a kind of confused dance, converging and diverging, anxiously redefining and contradicting themselves. Manufacturing costs have plummeted, disruptive business models are threatening the establishment, and accessibility of goods and information has increased tremendously, suppressing the traditional differentiators of scarcity, authenticity, cost, and taste. The resulting identity crisis, however, has generated a new set of strategies that inverts the notion of value. As premium nips at the ankles of luxury, luxury has gone around to bite mass market in the ass.
Specifically, through their approach to transparency—knowing your maker; building an authentic, open relationship through honest interactions—and longevity—a sense of timelessness positively associated with taste and negatively associated with trendiness—the luxury and premium segments have reconfigured our understanding of value and power. The key driver behind these transformations is data and the way both companies and individuals are able to leverage, access, or control information.
The new premium, perhaps best encapsulated by the successful San Francisco-based startup Everlane, champions “Radical Transparency” and carefully curated, perennially fresh “Modern Basics.” The brand website exhorts customers to “know your factories,” “know your costs,” and “always ask why.” As a way of delivering on this ethical mission, Everlane provides a slick photo story on each of its factories and an infographic breaking down the “true cost” of every garment. Customers are invited to visit the Everlane showroom/office for fittings, drinks, talks, and other events. True, Everlane is a company, but it acts like your super chill and chic confidante. Through IRL and other digital interactions, Everlane gains crucial feedback (i.e. customer data) on its products, allowing it to iteratively develop more and more tailored items based on their customer niche. Everlane’s Radical Transparency, like those increasingly sophisticated Amazon suggestions and Facebook ads, are driven by information. Transparency here has been restyled as an ethical, aspirational lifestyle choice which also happens to generate valuable customer data.
Similarly, the pursuit of longevity informs Everlane’s timeless “Modern Basics”: the perfect scoop neck tee, the evergreen simple cashmere sweater. “We don’t want fashion,” says Everlane CEO Michael Preysman, “We want lasting styles.“ Everlane’s attitude is trend-averse and taste-positive. Trends are unpredictable and low-brow; taste is consistent, legible, and has the air of exclusivity. Incidentally, taste is also increasingly mundane, knowable. Through influencers and style blogs, everyone can access and cultivate good taste. Suede mules, ficus lyrata, latte art, the Times print edition, natch. At the same time, data analytics provide a means of creating highly accurate customer profiles: in other words, taste is calculable; it can be tracked and measured.
The new premium is a double-edged sword: in exchange for Radical Transparency and Modern Basics at a lower price point, you have implicitly agreed to enter the algorithmic fold and the self-sustaining cycle of predictive analytics. Is there a way out? If you can afford it, yes. Watch out for Part 2, where we’ll look at Vetements and the rise of Liquid Luxury!
Re-gram via @everlane
filed under: #FuturePremium
