The importance of storytelling in presenting digital collections

“The era is coming when we will need storytelling. More than ever,
”wrote novelist and fashion editor Sophie Fontanel on the Nouvel Obs
website on June 16. This opinion, many brands and creative directors share
it, is in any case what their posts on social networks and their
presentations within Virtual Fashion Weeks show where everything remains to
be invented. Like the entire sector since the covid-19 crisis, fashion
storytelling, already shaken for several seasons by a more informed
consumer, is accelerating its evolution.

The garment, now the centre of attention, is told with a fresh, straight,
unbuffed look, suddenly giving a new lease of life to the campaigns of the
past years that focused more on attitude than on product. Today, in the
mass of digital content published by brands, new stories are bringing
fashion back from its pedestal. Clothing, however, retains its power of
enchantment, it offers a seemingly more accessible dream, where humility
becomes seductive. To make things clearer, here are four very contemporary
ways of presenting clothing and offering fashion a tasty narrative from
which it will draw its renewal.

1. The absence of models: Hanifa and Balenciaga

One of the most obvious ways when you think of putting the garment forward,
is to stick to it alone, without a mannequin, without anything other than
the material and the seams that articulate it. Radical in appearance, this
process is not without emotion or humanity.

Hanifa, a feminine and inclusive brand launched in 2012 by Anifa Mvuemba,
used 3D to reveal a collection where moving bodies seemed to have been
“erased”. The result is confusing. A white look advances, the stretch
cotton skirt marries the sensual approach but the silhouette has no bust,
no limbs, no head. The eye imagines the body more than it sees it. The
project took place as part of a virtual parade revealing the Pink Label
Congo collection and broadcast live on Instagram on Friday, May 22, 2020,
“a huge success” according to Nylon magazine.

With a more comical touch, the Parisian fashion house Balenciaga, has
appropriated the idea of silhouettes without a model. In the same
subversive tone that sums up his identity today, Balenciaga posted on his
Instagram account the photo of two looks, hand in hand, bodies as if passed
out under clothing. However, more than the trench or the top, this is the
creativity that is retained.

2. The act of dressing: Sunnei, Duckie Brown and Y / Project

There is this very simple but very clever way that certain brands have of
presenting their collection: simply filming the act of putting on a
garment. On its Instagram account, the Italian brand Sunnei thus posed its
camera in front of mannequins in the process of donning one by one clothing
and accessories from the collection. Against a background of white decor,
young girls and young men put on a t-shirt, pants, a dress, button up a
shirt and then put on their shoes. The video catches the eye, the eye is as
fascinated by what seems to be a backstage preview.

The images of Sunnei are reminiscent of the PE20 lookbook of the English
brand Duckie Brown, which adopted the same type of summary presentation by
infusing it with a touch of humor and elegance. Steven Cox and Daniel
Silver, its designers, have been interested in the gender issue for a long
time, so it is only natural that one of them, Steven Cox, acted as a model
for all the looks of the label, endorsing the same way female and male
pieces.

More recently, to better serve the “transformable” pieces of its collection
called “Evergreen”, Y / Project has adopted the minimalist approach,
pushing the stylistic cursor a little further. The video presented as part
of Parisian Spring-Summer 2021 Men’s Fashion Week is intended as a
tutorial: standing, in a triptych, three models appear dressed before being
joined by dressers responsible for modifying the outfit to offer him a new
wardrobe. Again, the eye catches.