From Success to Failure: The Risks and Rewards of Fashion Collaborations

A marriage of convenience is one that is produced to obtain legal, economic and social benefits, without there being an intense sentimental bond between the spouses. In France such marriages are called mariage blanc if there is no carnal consummation between the spouses, in the United States they are known as green card marriages and in some countries there are still so-called lavender marriages, which seek to hide the homosexuality of one or both partners.

In fashion, the particular marriages of convenience between brands are called collaborations: in recent years they have exploded in the sector and, as in real love affairs, there are great successes and resounding failures. Although they also involve risks, collaborations have spread throughout the industry, with participants ranging from luxury champions to retail giants or start-ups that are only a few years old.

Why have collaborations become so popular? Luis Lara, managing partner of Retalent and professor at Isem Fashion Business School, points out that the boom in collaborations between large companies, startups and historic brands “responds to the imperative (sometimes desperate) need to stand out in an increasingly saturated and competitive sector”. For their part, Beatriz Diego and Bosco Torres, director strategy and director strategy & economics at Interbrand, develop that “the world of brands is experiencing a turning point in which it is no longer enough to change the rules of the game, but rather to reinvent the game itself”. Brands, they continue, “create ecosystems and need to connect with audiences in every possible way, without forgetting to take a stand on social causes and be true agents of change”.

H&M with Karl Lagerfeld, Tiffany with Nike, Louis Vuitton with Supreme or Crocs with Balenciaga are some of the most striking collaborations in the fashion industry in recent years, where partnerships with historical brands such as El Niño or emerging brands such as TwoJeys or Gimaguas have also proliferated.

“In a sector where the boundaries between luxury, premium, fast fashion and low cost have been blurring, collaborating has become a way to generate impact, notoriety, renew brand discourse and stay culturally relevant,“ says Lara.

Javier Plazas, an expert trend analyst in the luxury sector, points out another key to the wave of collaborations: “brands with Generation Z owners are already born with collaboration as the main axis of their strategy, just as it happens with music”.

Good and bad collaborations

For Interbrand’s experts, partnerships can serve a variety of purposes: enter new arenas or territories (the case of Nike’s alliance with Apple), attract new audiences or conquer other consumer situations (Prada Linea Rossa with Axiom for the design of spacesuits for NASA, for example), renew and revitalize the product portfolio (Pokémon and Tiffany) or generate notoriety and relevance in a saturated market (Barbie with Zara, OPI, Crocs, NYX or Kipling). Finally, Diego and Torres point out that collaborations such as Adidas and Allbirds make it possible to “appropriate new meanings or strengthen existing ones”.

However, in spite of all these potentialities, collaborations also have risks and the great popularity of alliances between fashion brands or between fashion brands and brands from other sectors means that failures are also becoming more and more numerous.

Bershka and League of Legends, with a bad implementation that neither hooked the gamer nor the regular Bershka customer; Gap and Yeezy, which generated losses and a reputational crisis for Gap, or Balmain and H&M, with overproduction, overpricing, and a lack of brand awareness.M, with overproduction, too high prices and quality failures, and Target with Neiman Marcus, which generated confusion and little consumer interest, are four of the failures pointed out by the experts consulted.

Bershka, Gap and H&M have participated in failed collaborations with League of Legends, Yeezy and Balmain.

The big fiasco in what was more than a collaboration was that of Adidas with Kanye West. The cancellation of the Yeezy brand (in which Adidas had made an even more determined bet than Gap did) caused the German group to lose some $500 million in revenue in 2023, followed by legal and reputational problems from which the company took more than a year to recover.

“Many brands still fall into collaborations that are very focused on image, on aesthetics, without a real fit in terms of values,“ notes Lara, to what Plazas refers to as “coexistence in the culture” of both companies. For their part, the Interbrand experts also stress the need for a “strategic alignment” of the brands in the collaboration, but also for an evaluation of the brand’s performance.The best collaborations -prospective or prospective- are those in which the brand is not only the best, but also the best in terms of reputational risk assessment, “not over-promising” and being “honest” in their practices. The best collaborations,“ continues Lara, “are those that surprise and, at the same time, are perceived as natural because they complement values while still bringing something new and different to the consumer.

Timing is also key, as Plazas points out, even more so than the product itself, as well as the impact, which need not necessarily be global but can be targeted at a specific market.

The reference, according to Plazas, is Supreme, which generated a culture of collaboration and scarcity through partnerships, in addition to working with surprise as a fundamental factor. For Lara, the alliance between Supreme and Louis Vuitton “redefined the boundary between luxury and streetwear and elevated Supreme (although it later fell) while taking Louis Vuitton into new creative territories”. For their part, Diego and Torres point to the alliance between Loewe and On as a great example of successful collaboration.