The Decade of the Collab: What’s Next?

Without a doubt, the biggest fashion trend of the 2010s was the collab. Nearly every major brand dropped a collaboration collection this decade. Some labels built their name around their headline-churning partnerships, like Vetements or Off-White. Collabs are a brilliant marketing strategy, pulling press coverage and introducing brands to new audiences. Nowhere was this more relevant than the crossover between streetwear and luxury. Once considered polar opposites, streetwear and luxury are now well-acquainted forces understood as simultaneously influential in fashion. So why are luxury x streetwear collabs still talked about as game-changing?

Take the recent collaboration with Shawn Stussy and Kim Jones for Dior Men, which press credited as breaking down the boundary between designer and urban fashion. But this crossover has happened several times before, notably the Louis Vuitton x Supreme collection led by Kim Jones. Don’t get us wrong—we loved the Dior show, the clothing is great. It’s also impressive that Kim Jones worked with an artist he’s admired since his childhood and that Shawn Stussy came out of retirement for the project. It’s a fun collab, but it doesn’t have the same excitement to it to keep us talking about it for weeks.

It’s the consistent reinforcement of streetwear as “low” that has caused these collaborations to feel a bit stale. The recent drop of the Prada x adidas collab fails to wow because the labels rest on merely mixing their logos in silhouettes that we’ve already seen from both brands. This last wind of the logomania trend brings little design innovation and rests on a perceived juxtaposition that is no longer surprising.

So we want to look ahead, to see what’s next on the fashion horizon. The 2010s were all about uniting seemingly unlikely brands, led by star designers and brands as a fusion of two visionaries. But as the pace of fashion has rapidly picked up to follow social media and fast fashion, the narrative of the singular genius is falling out of fashion. Now more than ever, people want a medley of voices to hear from, which means the 2020s will be all about collective creativity.

Bringing several perspectives together to work on a series of projects is the ideal model for the Instagram age. The Moncler Genius project, for example, allows a series of guest creatives to design a capsule collection, with new content created every month. Chairman for the Italian brand, Remo Ruffini explains that brands nowadays must keep up with the pace of the Internet: “You cannot talk to your customer once every six months, you need to talk everyday.” With more creative voices comes more targeted connection to different audiences and a regular refreshing of ideas. By giving the creative partners more influence in the design process, collabs genuinely feel collaborative and inspiring.

This multisource creative model allow up-and-coming talent to give established brands a new artistic outlook. Kerby Jean-Raymond of Pyer Moss proposed this concept to Reebok, which has resulted in the Reebok Studies____ project. Jean-Raymond, the artistic director of the project, will curate a roster of artists, designers, and personalities to design new products while developing their own talents. Sourcing emerging artists breaks up the typical shuffle of designers across fashion houses, allowing for an effective and direct input of fresh ideas.

We’re looking forward to see which brands, designers, and creatives come together to create the next must-have collab collection. Social media has made it easier than ever to find new artistic voices, so the model of only one or two creative narratives is beginning to fade. With the right lineup of innovative, exciting talent, a communal collab has the possibility to shape the future of creative production.

‘Til the next drop,

the projects*