Can Gucci Take Met Gala Back To His Attention?

Lady Gaga changes 4 shapes in the red carpet joint, Katy Perry incarnated as a chandelier, and Ezra Miller draws 5 stereoscopic eyeballs on the face.

The opening of the annual fashion show Met Gala has become the only headline of today's fashion media.

Behind all kinds of bright and beautiful dresses, a secret battle between luxury brands is also quietly unfolding.

Met Gala, the Metropolitan Museum of Art charity dance in New York, is a preheated event for the annual exhibition of Metropolitan Museum of Art Fashion Museum. It has been regarded as the gathering place of "VOGUE" magazine advertisers for nearly 20 years, and is led by the team headed by fashion devil Anna Wintour. The theme of this year's exhibition is "Camp:Notes on Fashion", which aims to explore the different expressions of irony, humor, drama and exaggeration in fashion.

In October last year, curator Andrew Bolton announced the theme of this year. The theme was inspired by the Notes on "Camp" published by the American commentator Susan Sontag in 1964. The article gave 58 definitions of Camp.

She explained that the Camp style is "to exaggerate and achieve dramatic effects, but it is not just a subjective attitude, but a way of looking at things, objectively existing in works of art and human behavior itself."

In general, it is to exaggerate, subvert style and angle to explain the mundane things, and to express it in fashion as an air of style, artifice and even grandiose style.

Compared to the religious theme of 2018, "Camp" gives stars and brands more room to play.

The theme of this year's exhibition of Metropolitan Museum of Art fashion house in New York is "Camp:Notes on Fashion".

After the end of Met Gala, this year's theme exhibition will officially open to the public in May 9th.

Behind a charity banquet, not only is the star's red carpet clothing sponsorship, but also the brand's more behind the scenes wrestling, including the nepotism with VOGUE.

In the critical period of the integration of American and international business in Kangtai Nash group, the success or failure of this Met Gala this year is particularly important.

Perhaps in order to better respond to this theme, the main sponsor of this Met Gala is not only Kangtai Nash group, but also the Italy luxury brand Gucci, which is gorgeous and eccentric to the extreme in recent years. The host of the dinner also chose celebrities who are famous for their exaggerated style. They are Lady Gaga, Harry Styles, Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele and tennis star Serena tan.

What it means is that in the first month before Met Gala, the luxury brand DIOR, who has been supporting for many years, suddenly said that she would not attend. There was speculation that this was related to Gucci's sponsorship status. At present, the DIOR parent company LVMH and Kai Yun group two are fighting fiercely.

The brands that also exit are Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren.

For a while, this Met Gala was filled with some smell of smoke, and this year's Anna Wintour's first announcement of the guest list was interpreted as a remedy for the absence of the above brands.

In the earlier report, fashion headlines pointed out that as an activity to raise funds for the Metropolitan Museum of fashion, Met Gala is actually a complete commercial activity. The money spent by the brand and designer in Met Gala fundraising activities is not just to show goodwill to the fashion show, but also to enhance the status and influence of the brand in the market.

For this reason, brands and designers often have to pay 200 thousand to 300 thousand dollars for a table sponsorship fee or 35 thousand dollars a ticket, as well as the travel expenses of the invited stars. Gucci, as the main sponsor, still needs to pay for the dinner and exhibition. Although the cost is high, it is still an opportunity for us to regain our attention to Gucci, which is facing a "freshly falling crisis".

Andrew Bolton describes "Camp" as a style without content, and the strangeness, exaggeration, satire and even ridiculous drama complex contained in this culture are integrated into Gucci's works in the past 4 years by Alessandro Michele.

In fact, since Alessandro Michele became the brand creative director in 2015, it has continuously established a brand new and self-contained aesthetic system for Gucci by means of art. It has some metaphorical animal patterns, gorgeous accessories, ethnic embroidery, tweed suit, and age wide shoulder dress. The seemingly random combination makes Gucci brand full of tension and recognition.

Earlier in the interview with System, Alessandro Michele said that from the end of 1990s to the present, the whole fashion industry has become more and more product oriented, and creativity has almost disappeared.

To this end, he has incorporated special themes and forms into every series of Gucci. For example, the Gucci 2018 autumn and winter series "surreal" cyberpunk aims to encourage people to break the traditional shackles, look at and think from different angles and create new possibilities. The 2019 series released earlier this year, with the help of the theme of "multiple masks", tries to help people reflect on the process of individual remodeling and self creation, which is a manifestation of Camp style.

Just like the Andy Warhol half a century ago, the Gucci under the control of Alessandro Michele has far exceeded the scope that other brands can intervene. Even in the Yves Saint Laurent, John Galliano period, the DIOR and the once with the same name were also no exception.

According to the fashion business express, the global fashion search platform Lyst released a new report before the Met Gala. The "Camp" style that covers gorgeous elements such as sequins, feathers and wrinkles is on the rise. Last year, the volume of search for the "sequins" on the platform rose by 199%, and the search for feathers increased by 93%.

In the report, Lyst specifically called Gucci "King of Camp". Its data show that after the autumn and winter show of the cyberpunk theme of Gucci in 2018, the number of consumers searching for "Gucci Heads" quickly exceeded 1000 times.

Such Gucci naturally becomes the first choice of the red carpet for many guests of this Met Gala.

As the protagonist of the party, Alessandro Michele, dressed in a gorgeous Rose Satin suit and dressed in black chiffon blouse and high heeled Harry Styles, unveiled a delicate set of embroidered Phoenix dresses made by Li Yuchun, the ambassador of the Gucci brand. The intention is obvious to further exert influence on China. At present, Li Yuchun has more than 11 million fans in micro-blog.

In addition, Jared Leto, Dakota Johnson and Florence Welch are also attending the Gucci dress. Jared Leto follows the Gucci 2018 autumn winter show, holding its own simulation head model.

According to fashion headline data monitoring, only Gucci official Instagram's current Met Gala sticker has received more than 800 thousand points.

Because of the theme of Camp, this year's guests have been presenting the Met Gala red carpet in an exaggerated fashion.

Perhaps at Gucci's home, Louis Vuitton looks even more low-key than in previous years. Creative director Nicolas Ghesqui re re and actress Emma Stone set foot on the red carpet, the two person modeling is a simple retro route.

Despite the absence of DIOR in the same group, the supermodel Gisele Bunchen still opted for the brand's advanced custom pleated skirt.

The supermodel Naomi Campell is present in the Valentino high level custom dress. The only Chinese male star in the audience is Zhang Yixing, who is the spokesman for Valentino men's costume in Greater China.

The most styled reality show star Kim Kardashian's dress is designed by Thierry Mugler, a designer of the ghosts. Kendall and Kylie Jenner's dress were provided by Versace, the most influential media of last year. Supermodel Gigi Hadid chose the "Michael" dress, and the gown dress came to herself.

At the same time, John Galliano, Alexander Wang, and Prabal Grung, Schiaparallie and other high definition designer brands also appeared on the red carpet.

Among them, Schiaprallie 2018 autumn show Flamingo elements were placed in the center of New York Metropolitan Museum.

Anna Wintour chose Karl Lagerfeld as its custom-made CHANEL dress, and recently hip-hop female singer Rihanna, who had a close relationship with LVMH and always appeared on the axis, rarely appeared.

Earlier, it was reported that LVMH plans to work with Rihanna to create a brand new luxury brand.

Needless to say, Rihanna is one of the most popular women on the Met Gala red carpet.

With the development of Anna Wintour, Met Gala has truly achieved business success.

According to the analysis, Gucci has become the protagonist of this Met Gala with absolute exposure, and this is also a key opportunity for Gucci to suppress DIOR.

Just a week ago, DIOR, who was absent from Met Gala in Morocco, was built in the ruins of El Badi Palace palace in sixteenth Century. It held the first luxury spring holiday grand show this year. It is also the largest fashion brand released in the past ten years.

Whether it's a ceremonial show or a series of immersive experiences before the show, DIOR has raised the standards of the competition again.

In the next two months, it is no easy task for Gucci to stand out from the 17 fashion shows that will be held in 11 cities around the world. After all, competitors are not only Louis Vuitton, but also the luxury brands such as CHANEL and Fendi, which are much concerned about the death of Karl Lagerfeld.

After the end of Met Gala, this year's theme exhibition will be officially opened to the public in May 9th and will continue until September 8th.

The 250 exhibits can be traced back to seventeenth Century. The sculptures, paintings and sketches from Louis Xiv and Louis from fifteen to twentieth Century also cover the latest works of designers such as Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Marc Jacobs and Thierry Mugler. They even include Off-White master, Louis Vuitton creative director of the men's wear, the design of the street full of sense, and the co chairman, Mr. Yu's creation, is also naturally there.

In the introduction and publicity of the "Camp:Notes on Fashion" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum website, Gucci and Kangtai Nash group were printed on the sponsor's column, which meant that the attention of the brand was extended for 4 months along with the exhibition, which is undoubtedly a "booster" for Gucci, whose performance is showing signs of slowing down.

According to fashion headline data, Gucci will reach a plateau of 8 billion euros in annual revenue after running 12 quarters.

In the first quarter of March 31st, Gucci sales increased by 24.6% to 2 billion 326 million euros, the growth rate slowed sharply compared with 37.9% in the same period last year, and the growth rate also slowed down. The increase in the fourth quarter of last year was 28%.

What is more alarming is that Gucci needs to "revitalize" the US market.

In the first quarter of this year, Gucci's performance in the North American market dragged down the overall growth of the brand. The market growth slowed to 5%, a rare single digit growth and the slowest growth area in the world. Some analysts believe that this may be related to the Gucci new series of black turtleneck sweater "Balaclava".

During the same period, the LVMH fashion leather Department, which included the two trump cards of Louis Vuitton and DIOR, continued to run faster, with sales surging 20% to 5 billion 110 million euros, an increase of 15% over the same period last year, reaching a 5 year high.

The group stressed that all Louis Vuitton and DIOR businesses continued to grow strongly. In February, the brand men and women's autumn and winter fashion show was widely praised.

Since last year, the competitive relationship between Gucci and LVMH luxury brands has been clarified.

First of all, Gucci Fran, ois-Henri Pinault, CEO of Kai Yun group, released the statement that it wanted to "destroy" Louis Vuitton. Then Marco Bizzarri also said in an interview that it would achieve the target of $10 billion annual sales of Gucci as soon as possible.

In June last year, Gucci suddenly announced its show in Paris, which was held on the same day with DIOR, which directly fired the war into the base area of LVMH.

In addition to Gucci, Kai Yun group also fostered the two quasi Gucci of Saint Laurent and Balenciaga, and appointed the 33 year old creative director Daniel Lee for Bottega, another group of core brands of the group, in order to make the second tier brand to contribute more sales to the group while avoiding the risk of Gucci disgrace.

The LVMH boss, Bernard Arnault, who is well versed in the rules of the luxury industry, naturally will not let the open cloud group wanton provocation. He once told the foreign media that the competitors such as Kai Yun group had been copying in the past ten years and thought they would not succeed.

Subsequently, LVMH launched a creative director's shuffle with great difficulty. She brought the controversial Street trend opinion leader and Off-White founder Virgil Abloh to her team, and pferred the designer Kim Jones, who was good at giving brand new vitality to Dior men's clothing, and gave full support to the new innovation director Hedi Slimane's innovative initiatives, trying to use these three trump cards to fight back to open the cloud.

Entering the 2019, the competition became more intense.

LVMH spent $3 billion 200 million to acquire high-end hotel operator Belmond, then bought a few shares of New York designer brand Gabriela Hearst, and sources said that LVMH was negotiating with Off-White parent company New Guards Group Holdings S.p.A on acquisitions.

In contrast, the strong growth of Kai Yun group is still dependent on Gucci. This brand officially released the first beauty product lipstick series led by Alessandro Michele this week, trying to break the current stalemate.

There are signs that the competition for luxury oligarchs has risen to a higher level and the situation will be more and more complicated.

Although tonight's Met Gala will be a grand occasion, the dark warfare hidden beneath the surface will continue to be stuck. The impact of this exhibition on consumer cognition will take longer.

Met Gala will undoubtedly make more people pay attention to Camp style, and it will be a great benefit to a large number of Italy brands such as Gucci from the cultural level.

It is worth emphasizing that the Internet is the embodiment of Camp culture's spirit of grandiose spirit. Camp is not only a fashion style, but also a projection of current cultural phenomenon and lifestyle. This explains why this year's Met Gala red carpet is particularly lively and has gained a high degree of social media attention. After all, behind the dark smoke of luxury brands, everything is for the competition of attention.

Author: Crystal