The history of music being related to fashion runs deep. Musicians are celebrities, and people follow what celebrities do. Celebrities are trendsetters in just about every way, but musicians specifically are involved in the fashion world.
Musicians like Pharrell Williams, Freddie Mercury, and Kanye West have all paved the way in certain areas of fashion.
Pharrell Williams’ fashion is distinguishable by his use of hats: he’s added an entire new way to enhance an outfit besides just shoes, pants, and a shirt.
Freddie Mercury is the trailblazer for flamboyant outfits. He would come on stage in something new (and slightly ridiculous) every night, ranging from leather to spandex to a cape and crown. Mercury set the stage for musicians to wear never-seen-before outfits and be very creative.
Kanye West’s image as a celebrity may be on the line, but his impact on the fashion industry is not. He introduced shoes that look like clouds, and now just about every major brand has copied the style in some way.
Pharrell, Freddie, and Kanye are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to musicians’ impacts on fashion, though.
There have been countless collaborations between musicians and fashion brands. Recently in the sneaker world, Travis Scott’s collaboration with Nike has caught fire. The Jordan 1 Retro ‘Travis Scott’ Low’s resell for $800+.
What makes Travis Scott’s collaboration so successful, though? We see collaborations with artists bigger than Travis Scott sputter out.
Essentially, the design of the shoe really is everything. The colorways that Travis Scott released are soothing. The Nike swoosh is different than the rest of Jordan 1 Low’s. It’s cohesive, minimalistic, yet bold. The shoe is unique.
Travis Scott’s collaboration might be the gold standard, but we’ve seen other very successful collaborations.
Pharrell Williams has been heavily involved with Adidas in fashion and in sneakers, Bad Bunny and J Balvin have both represented the Latin Music genre recently in collaborations, and Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, Drake, and Lil Wayne have had solid collaborations as well.
While these artists all have huge audiences already, their amount of popularity before the collaboration doesn’t have a huge effect on the popularity of their shoes. We’ve seen unsuccessful collaborations by nearly all of the artists listed prior.
The realization that the sneaker market still values shoes for the quality of shoe and quality of design is a breath of fresh air.
It’s easy to get caught up in hype of a certain artist or pure resell value and forget about how the shoe looks. As much as the sneaker resell market is growing, it will always maintain its standards.
Mateo Moyon
