We come from a country founded as a fur-trading outpost, so the current vogue for making hay out of one’s fashionable heritage is nothing new on our shores. But as style labels around the world dig deeper into their own (real and sometimes imagined) past, have the buzzwords lost their meaning?
This look backwards to the quality — and safety — of the past has been taking place right across the market. At the highest end of the market — think logo faves such as Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Chanel — designers have been trolling their archives, bringing back big hits. Think of the sleek, low-slung Gucci python bag in stores now, called the 1970 in honour of the first time it appeared on an ultra-tanned jetset shoulder.
The pressure of the trend-driven knock-off in the 1990s first caused luxury brands to prise open their archives, and Canadian brands are well positioned to capitalize. “I really see this trend developing as a backlash against fast fashion,” says Susie Sheffman, fashion director at Dealuxe, a Canadian website that offers curated sales alongside editorial content.
But it is the high street’s fascination with vintage that really brought about the vogue for dusting off heritage credibility. As designers trolled past the eternal infernal 1970s and 1980s revivals to dig into Victorian lace (and this spring’s white-hot Daisy Buchanan tiptoe through the 1920s), the hipper mid-price mass labels found fusty to be a financial salvation. Think of the retro sneaker stylings at Nike and New Balance and Adidas.
Think of Roots, Hudson’s Bay Company and Linda Lundstrom, as well as revived interest in “classic” labels such as Pendelton, L.L. Bean and Barbour, All are brands that can credit their resurgence to going back to what they did well (leather, blanket coats, the La Parka, wool jumpers, rubber lace-up boots and waxed car coats, respectively).
“Established ‘heritage’ brands need to work harder than ever to justify high price tags in a world where fast-fashion brands are churning up trends and spitting out deals at warp speed. This is one crucial way that established brands can feel superior about their ‘slow fashion’ approach. Whether they are touting 150 years of artisanal craftsmanship, or trotting out 95-year-old atelier seamstresses in white coats, the message of luxury, quality and longevity rings true.”
The trend picked up steam just as the economy ran out of it. It was 2009 when Christopher Bailey took over the helm at Burberry, the British bastion of tradition. He ingeniously used the label’s most resonant and nostalgic item, the trench, to blast the past into the present in a blaze of London fabulous on Potter-packer Emma Watson.
The high street’s fascination with vintage helped: as this spring’s white-hot Gatsby-inspired tiptoe through the 1920s shows, designers trolled past the eternal infernal 1970s and 1980s revivals to dig into Victorian lace, finding fusty to be a financial salvation.
Then a wave of nostalgic basics swept the middle market (the word classic got plain worn out) — blazers, penny loafers, tweeds and twin-sets — with the idea that familiar and simple is a good response to uncertainty.
But pounding the safe shores of tradition, heritage and classical is the relentless churning beast known as fast fashion. Don’t have a pedigree? Add an old number to your name! To wit, the Abercrombie-style teen shop Aeropostale is branded 87, the year of its founding. Come to think of it, to its 12-year-old customers, 1987 may as well be the Stone Age.
Old is new, says Robert Ott, chair of Ryerson University’s school of fashion. “Using celebrities in marketing has run its course, just like supermodels did. Trends in advertising become ubiquitous very quickly as they develop with luxury brands right through the discount channel.”
But then it seemed like everyone got the same memo. “Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Chanel all virtually had identical ad campaigns showing the heritage of handcrafted, luxury items seemingly made one at a time,” says Ott.
Why?
“It is quite powerful to allow the consumer to almost create their own advertising campaign by imagining their own participation in the brand, the nostalgia of yesterday, the security of a safer and simpler life.”
When fashion trends change a dozen times in the course of a single season — March’s bold oranges will give way to April’s mint green and then on to June’s palette of pinks — brands need to tap into an emotional element, says Suzanne Timmins, fashion director at the Hudson’s Bay Company, which is 342 years old itself this year.
“Perhaps we can blame it on the digital age and the feeling that nothing is permanent and everything is fleeting into some kind of black hole,” Timmins says, “resulting in a visceral need to adopt lifestyles/items/brands perceived to be real with a story to tell. Perhaps we did not sit on our grandmum’s lap long enough to hear our own family stories/history. She might even have brought out her photo album. Remember those?”
Ott sees the limit to this trend. As fast-fashion brands co-opt both the marketing strategy and the hallmarks of the heritage look — even knockoff Birkins can be found in the under-three-zeros purveyors — the battle is won or lost on authenticity.
“I think it is a ridiculous notion for a company to believe that by ‘manufacturing’ heritage, tradition and trust in direct response to a trend in marketing convinces the consumer (it’s) true,” says Ott.
Fashion eats its young, and it will now eat its old as well: there will always be value in a handmade Hermès scarf at the rarefied top of the market. We will always want to buy a piece of history shinier than our own to incorporate into the life stories we tell about and to ourselves.
But down in the trenches, oversupply means heritage will get tired in the to-the-death fast-fashion arena; you can’t fake quality. A trench bought for $29 at Joe Fresh may be fun and exhilarating, a great gotcha cash-register high, but it likely won’t make the cut in your will.