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Quiet Luxury vs. Dupes. Who wins?
Quiet luxury: the propensity of great brands of reducing logos aiming instead to a clean and plain outfit.
Foreshadowed already during this fall's fashion shows, this trend was confirmed in January's Men Fashion Weeks, both in Milan and Paris.
Luxury being quiet is something we’re actually not so used to, but iconic brands seem tired of the thoughtless exaggeration that sees flashy logos applied everywhere, and this might be precisely because the risk here is that the customer buys for the logo, and not for the quality.
Quiet Luxury is the expression of no-frills, brand-free quality dress. It is an attitude of minimalist aesthetics in which logos give way to monochrome.
It favours "muted" colours such as beige, brown and black applied to a fine design. Elegance and sophistication are two of the concepts behind the latest collections of both iconic brands and large fast fashion chains.
Brands such as Gucci, Prada or Loropiana are already known as advocates of monochrome, unadorned clothes; hence their plain suits weren't really astonishing during the shows - quietly luxurying speaking. But when brands like Dolce&Gabbana, Louis Vuitton or Versace decide to redefine their pompous line guide, here something is changing.
In this frame, stressing the quality and the piece of clothing itself, the shopper is being exhorted to buy what they truly like, not something that is from one brand rather than another.
Spending money for a value, this is the key but at the same time, it might be a double-edged sword.
Why? Dupes.
Dupes, short for “duplicates”, are the other rising trend in recent months.
Literally the act of deceiving someone or something, nowadays we all refer to this word as imitations of popular products, the form of which, however, does not reflect the actual content. Basically these products are cheap alternatives to the originals. Legally, they are not considered counterfeits but in practice, those who buy them (along with the fakes) are the ones who would like to have something luxury but cannot afford it.
The dupes-buyer is in fact buying a non-original product which does look like the original one.
One of the main reasons these products are not illegal is precisely because the originals do not have prominent logos, a symptom of the aforementioned Quiet Luxury.
We are thus facing the luxury world trying to focus more and more on actual quality and the general public taking advantage of this to appear what it really is not, and does not have. A dog biting its own tail.
The discrimine probably lies in the awareness that each of us has when creating an outfit or choosing a piece of clothing: do I choose it for what it is, what it always is, how it fits me?
This means both freeing ourselves from the idea of buying something just because it belongs to a brand and reasoning about what we really like.
I think this war between Dupes and Quiet Luxury emphasises the importance of disengaging from the brand, checking the label and selecting quality. I actually think Luxury brand rather go you
Is this perhaps a call for more attention to the manufacturing quality of what we buy? Coming from the very ones who should be aiming precisely at selling.
Big brands would rather know we check the label and decide to buy a t-shirt from Uniqlo than to pretend to have a fake t-shirt, regardless they may still benefit and gain visibility from a fake garment, which in our twisted world is still a billboard.
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