Over 200,000 people attended the Singapore Grand Prix to watch the Round 16 of 2023 FIA Formula One World Championships. The tension was high as spectators wondered if Max Vertappen, who has had a perfect season for Red Bull so far, could win 11th in a series. Alas, Verstappen was pushed out of the top ten in the qualifiers to come in fifth overall while Ferrari’s “smooth operator”, Carlos Sainz, put up a crowd-awing show to bag first place with Maclaren’s Lando Noriss in second and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton in third.
Hamilton, along with Rose and Kylian Mbappe, has made headlines for a completely different reason. Rimowa released their latest campaign for their “Never Still” series, tapping on none other than Hamilton along with K-Pop megastar Rosé and French football captain Kylian Mbappé. In the campaign, Hamilton featured in an emotional car ride montage, reflecting on his life as a driver and how he wants to pass goodness forward. The allusion was made to Mission 44 which is the non-profit branch of his own fashion brand, +44. Hamilton’s own 35 million follower Instagram page (Sainz has eight while Verstappen, 10) puts a spotlight on his fashion endeavours rather than the latest F1 happenings, the first three posts on his feed dedicated to his label and Rimowa campaign rather than his latest race at the time of writing.
It was hard to tell the differences. Hamilton’s picture of choice for his post on the Dutch Grand Prix in late August looked more Paris Fashion Week than F1, a candid of Hamilton steelily walking down the track draped in a luxurious black satin shirt baring his stylishly tattooed chest, complimented by a thick silver chain on his neck and goggle-like blackout shades to boot. Hamilton came sixth in Zandvoort. However, the post garnered over a million views. Hamilton may be a decade older, on average, than Sainz, Verstappen and Sainz, but he is still more popular and relevant in pop culture and the F1 world.
Luxury’s Latest Muses
Hamilton’s status as a fashion icon is no doubt owing to his personal style and rockstar personality in the circuit; he surely set the precedent for what the intersection of luxury fashion and professional sport could look like — a new kind of super-celebrity — and the biggest names in luxury have already been catching on to his unique formula for fame. Today, Hamilton is but one of a new generation of athletes who have become luxury fashion’s latest muses of choice.
Luxury has historically reserved their billboards and campaigns for the traditional celebrity — Hollywood actors and international pop artists. Imagine Marilyn Monroe wearing Salvatore Ferragamo stilettos on the silver screen and in real life, or Richard Gere dressing up in Armani for his debut role as the “The”. American Gigolo; more recently, Taylor Swift’s record-breaking The Eras Tour for which Christian Louboutin has exclusively designed Swift’s costumes as well as Simon Jacquemus who spares no excess in boasting his beloved friendship with Dua Lipa on social media, itself an exclusive form of marketing for his eponymous label.
Celebrities with music videos, films and global tours have long been considered the perfect muse for high-end fashion. They are visible in the media, making their bodies almost ubiquitous. Yet, a new stage for brokering luxury’s 24/7 visibility has emerged in recent years — the stage of professional sport. Tennis stars like the world’s No. Jannik Sinner, world No. 7, made history by carrying a custom Gucci duffel bag onto the Wimbledon court. The 22 year-old Italian player’s power move required special approval from the presiding authorities of the sport which has long obsessively regulated its players attire. Louis Vuitton’s world-number one designer, Mr. 2. Carlos Alcaraz launched in late August the house’s 2024 Spring/ Summer formalwear campaign, filled with dynamic poses of the 20 year-old Spanaird leaping into the air as if to smash yet another winning forehand stroke.
With their chiselled bodies and boyish good looks, new-gen athletes like Sinner and Alcaraz seem to make perfect sense as luxury’s latest muses. Their bodies and faces take on an almost larger-than-life appearance, a result of the drama of the struggle to dominate their sport.
These athletes also have a larger presence at global fashion events, including the big four fashion week. These events often see them seated between other celebrities from the spheres of cinema and music, quite materially solidifying their celebrity status and bringing the realm of sport so close to luxury fashion’s that they have now become adjacent. It’s official — luxury fashion has become a core element of a successful athlete’s image.
Live Streaming and the Evolution of High vs. Low Sport
Luxury and athletes have never been synonymous. It is likely that this is due in part to the disparity between high- and low-level sport. While sports like tennis and car-racing have historically been spectator sports for society’s elites with no shortage of luxury sponsors, not all sports have been so charmed. Football, a historically low sport, is still marred by football hooliganism. It can be dangerous to watch matches live. It is enough to attend one match in both the professional tennis and football leagues to see the difference: while spectators remain quiet during tennis matches, except for a few applauses when a goal is scored, football fans chant from the start of the match until the end, hurling insults and slurs at the opposition team.
Yet, the European football industry of this so-called “low sport” is going strong as a nearly USD30 billion dollar industry with its fair share of moments in luxury’s limelight, c.f. Louis Vuitton’s viral campaign, which featured Cristiano Ronaldo playing chess with Lionel Messi on top of Louis Vuitton’s suitcase in anticipation of the FIFA World Cup of 2022 to be held in Qatar. After all, we perhaps can expect no less from what has been touted as the world’s largest sporting event for which the namesake LVMH fashion house has partnered with for four consecutive iterations. Louis Vuitton took the success of the 2022 campaign, and featured the winning captain, Messi, in a travel campaign for summer this April.
It could be said that luxury simply goes where money goes, but LVMH’s recent announcement of their official partnership with the 2024 Paris Olympics points to something greater underlying the allure of sport as a receptacle for luxury — the universal reach of live streaming. It is impossible to deny that the entertainment industry is a force for good in society. Everyone is watching something every second. The effect of watching something forever is magnified for global events such as the World Cup or the Olympics, where people all over the world are personally invested and have an interest in seeing them live.
Luxury is probably attracted to this commodification and mass-marketization of sport. Both high-end and low-end sports have become more accessible, making the industry not only lucrative, but also a global phenomenon. F1 had a European-dominated fan base for the majority of its first 70 years. It was only when American media giant Liberty Media Corporation purchased the circuit that it became the global spectacle it is now, thanks to streaming deals with the major sports networks. US viewership grew by 28 percent year-on-year for 2022’s season, recording one million viewers on average per race according to international sports channel, ESPN.
Luxury’s Great Mass Market Shift
Mass market and luxury seem incompatible. Luxury is what we aspirationally desire, idealise and aspire to, while mass market simply means popular, affordable and trendy. What catalysed luxury’s mass market shift? This is probably the only logical next step for a fashion industry that has become increasingly corporatized. With most fashion houses today having been acquired by one luxury mega-conglomerate or the other, upwards trends for revenue and scale are the only way to go — profit, is what defines success for privatised luxury fashion.
Partnerships with sporting events and athletes are just one part of a larger mass market push towards consumer trends including the likes of influencer marketing and ESG, a push to recognise who luxury’s consumer can be rather than who they ought to be. The super-celebrity becomes the perfect fit in this case. Sport has always been a powerful common denominator bridging vastly different social milieux while their aspirations in becoming sporting champions run parallel to that of luxury fashion’s in defining what truly makes couture.
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