With the birth of haute couture in the late 1800s, Paris quickly became the epicenter of fashion creativity, setting the standard for style throughout the world. This coalesced with a burgeoning nouveau riche class and the introduction of new forms of transportation that connected the world. Designers such as Paul Poiret set their sites on creating more than just clothing, offering products such as perfumes and home furnishings to support his client’s modern lifestyle. It was the birth of lifestyle branding, and it hits jet speed in the 1920s.  

Subsequent fashion houses, became adept at curating and telling their brand story, mixing fact and fiction to add to their label’s mystique and create an overall DNA. The tight control of the brand narrative ensured exclusivity as these brands began to spread throughout the world. 

Fast forward to today, the very myths that ensure these brands still exist, is now a potential liability. Customers now have access to the internet, where controlling brand narrative is much more difficult. And information is much easier to get online, leading customers to find new information that runs counter to a brand’s purported history. Customers are demanding transparency, and prefer authenticity to a “pitch perfect” story. This is forcing luxury brands into a corner. Is it good business to be more forthcoming around their history? For example, does being truthful about Chanel’s role in World War II and subsequent banishment from France, potentially hurt or help the brand in the 21st century? How does that counterbalance with the Dior/Galliano fiasco, if at all?

What seems to be clear is that if brands are still struggling to determine how best to grapple with their complex histories more truthfully, is it any wonder that these brands will also continue to struggle with current issues around diversity, cultural appropriation, production processes and more? Perhaps a reckoning with the past is what’s needed to best approach the future.