It’s a Match! Fashion Officially Loves Tinder
Fashion has been casually hooking up with online dating apps for a while now, but with Diesel’s foray into Tinder, the relationship’s been made official. The Nicola Formichetti-led brand has released a series of cheeky ads — inspired by the artistic director’s “anti-fashion” approach to the industry — that appear as profiles on Tinder.
“This is how serious I am about us” one user profile that doubles as a programmatic ad reads. The model, wearing a bomber jacket with star and tiger patches on it from the Fall/Winter 2015 collection, gives his best blue steel and puppy eye combination. Another features a redheaded woman with bedhead wearing a comfy sweater that’s “girlfriend material.” Both illustrate that Diesel’s in on the joke — while also poking fun at it — drawing a connection to the young demographic that views dating apps in this same accepting-slash-mocking attitude.
According to Andreas Neophytou, creative director at Spring, the agency Diesel hired, the strategy came from the belief that honesty’s the new form of brave. “Not honesty in a pious way, but ‘let’s just be honest about who we are’. We are a fashion brand and we can do fashion, but we can also laugh at fashion at the same time.” It’s this that seems to set Diesel apart from its competitors who are simply paying premium rates to appear on the pages of Vogue. Neophytou believes that Diesel’s “got the ability to say so much more than other brands, and I think that allows them to be in these other places, it allows them to have a point of view on different things.”
A Calvin Klein ad depicting a threesome and some casual sexting. Photo: Courtesy
Diesel’s not the first fashion brand to insert itself into the app in an attempt to leverage the millions of young people actively looking for, if not love, then some kind of connection. Calvin Klein’s latest campaign employed sexting and the in-app integration let users swipe right or left. The #mycalvins initiative featured black and white images of couples — heterosexual, same-sex, and even a threesome — with copy like “hahah a light threesome never hurt anyone ☺ ☺ ☺” in a text box. “We saw a behavior happening out there — and not just [with] the younger generation. It’s really dating via digital. It’s authentic and true to how this consumer communicates,” Melisa Goldie, Calvin Klein Inc. chief marketing officer, explained to WWD. “We’re highlighting the truth about dating – the meet up, the hookup and the freedom that you have through the digital dating landscape and how instantaneous it is.”
But The Kooples took the fascination with online and mobile dating to the next level. The French label launched its own app for lovers and couples who want to communicate confidentially. The Kooples Blackout app, which is a combination of a spam blocker, Tinder, and Snapchat, disrupts, or “blacks out” any other activity on a mobile device while engaged in romantic communication and also offers the ability to share blurred images and different parts come into focus upon touching the pic. The sartorial connection is a bit fuzzy (for launch, a short fashion film was released), but the company, started by brothers Alexandre, Lauren and Raphael Elicha in 2008, has famously always used couples in its campaigns.
So is this strategy working? Swipe right!
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