Patricia Romatet, Head of market research at the IFM, was the keynote speaker at a round-table discussion entitled « LuxStreet - Rue et Luxe, la croisée de deux mondes », on Tuesday April 13th at the Palais de Tokyo. The event was organized by Luxbox/Le Figaro and chaired by Elisabeth Quin, and it brought together Michel Maffesoli, sociologist and lecturer at the Sorbonne, and Cyril du Cluzeau, marketing director at Nike France. Luxbox luxury business think-tank open to operational communicators in the business (advertisers, consultancies, media agencies…).

Patricia Romatet inaugurated the discussion showing to what extent street culture is becoming more and more influential in fashion (a mix of music, fashion but also freedom, and a faster and more spontaneous rhythm). Attitudes and codes inspired by sport, rebel and anti-establishment poses: these external signs, more male than female, are but a part of the influences that come from the street. Street marketing and pop up stores are other opportunities to make brand exist outside the traditional tools used.

By hitting the streets in search of inspiration, luxury and fashion brands are trying to touch new markets and to prove that they are moving with the times, up to date. The way information circulates on the internet can be compared to the expression of a virtual and planetary street. A market like China, where luxury is young and male, has helped to speed up the phenomenon. But brands must take care not to dilute or make luxury too accessible.

Michel Maffesoli prefers to talk of the strength rather than the power of the street, as « strength » comes from below, and “power” comes from above. The crisis, that we wrongly think is economic in nature is in fact a “sea change in attitudes”, with a growing refusal of the functionality of objects (luxury = dislocation). The function of desire seems to be taking over from anything that resembles the utilitarian or the useful, in a refusal of "bourgeoisisme". It is no longer necessary to own something to get a feeling of luxury (“we are looking for the price of things that are priceless”). With the Internet and virtual worlds, we have seen the return of the primacy of the image, banished by reason since Descartes, and the triumph of horizontality (to sum up: “I am their leader, I must follow them”).

Cyril du Cluzeau explained that at Nike, the overlap between fashion and the street was one of the brand’s building blocks, even though it didn’t originate in the street as it was set up in the Western US by an athlete and his coach. But with sport as a lever, Nike doesn’t ask questions about the barriers between social territories, and for Nike the French territory is a reservoir with “the suburbs and its codes, and Paris, the fashion capital in the centre”.

See Patricia Romatet’s presentation:
http://issuu.com/ifm-paris/docs/luxstreetv3

Also see the latest issue of Cahiers de l'Imaginaire (a magazine edited by Michel Maffesoli, on luxury:
http://www.lescahiers.eu/

Share this page on Facebook

In the same section