What's So Funny About Fashion
Loewe, Alexis Bittar, and Cynthia Rowley get in on the joke.
Framing is a reader-supported publication that unpacks what’s good in culture + marketing, by Anita Schillhorn van Veen, from decades of experience in marketing and culture industries.
Fashion isn’t known for its sense of humor. Its seriousness has been parodied by everyone from Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada to Ben Stiller in Zoolander, and its advertising is all thin unsmiling women wafting through glamorous spaces. When fashion veers towards humor, it’s is more of a wink than a laugh; Viktor & Rolf’s misfit gowns or Loewe’s balloon heels. Or Balenciaga’s pointed humor that always seems to be saying something about nothing, like its accessories partnership with Los Angeles’s bougiest grocery Erewhon.
But recently fashion has dipped its dainty toe into something funnier.
Alexis Bittar is running an ongoing content series about Margaux, an Upper East Side dame extraordinaire and her beleaguered assistant Jules, a delightful romp through Manhattan from Lincoln Center to Bergdorf’s. It’s a treat on social media, and on their site it’s immediately shoppable.
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Loewe put out a content series with Aubrey Plaza and Dan Levy, addressing the profound issue of how to pronounce “Loewe,” with a produced piece and seemingly endless behind-the-scene takes that are just as entertaining.
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And in 2023, Cynthia Rowley took it to the runway, dressing a string of top tier comedians like Michelle Buteau and Nikki Glaser for her New York Fashion Week show.
Neither TikTok nor on stand-up comedy stages are known for their glamor; these are the spaces where people get real in the name of a laugh, where the relatable wins out over the unattainable. Like every other vertical, fashion is sorting out how to show up and create not just products but also content that gets at younger audience, and some brands have found that funny is more engaging than the ice cold Helmut Newton models of the 20th century.
Ana Andjelic nails it in her recent issue of The Sociology of Business, on how fashion needs a new take on creativity that goes beyond the product:
Just like an entertainment company pulls in the different talent to deliver a movie or a television show, fashion companies need to do the same - to produce not just their seasonal collections, but their entire creative and business output.
When it comes to humor, it’s next level for an industry known for its self-seriousness. Fashion brands like Loewe are expanding the creativity of their style, and introducing fresh, polished and still entertaining content. Adventuring into humor puts them into new cultural conversations—and positions them to fanbases hungry for more than just glamour.
It’s fashion week for Framing; I spent some talking fashion and older generations with The Business of Fashion here last week.
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