Forget the big names: fashion brands pivot to less-familiar faces

As a kid in high school in a backwater town of NSW, the only reason I knew about Victoria’s Secret was because of the underwear brand’s network of “Angels” – a collection of models who walked a runway show annually. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I could not imagine a more glamorous setting than a Victoria’s Secret store, which had not yet reached Australia. There must, I figured, be something extremely cool about this brand and its lacy offerings, especially if mononymic superstars like Gisele, Heidi, Miranda and Karlie believed in it.

With hindsight, the sheen of Victoria’s Secret has become more of a stain. Once considered the pinnacle of a model’s career – Gisele Bündchen reportedly earned more than $US25 million ($38 million) from her seven years with the company – given what we now know about how it operated, and the extremely unhealthy lengths models went to in preparing for the show (in some cases, not even drinking water for days in the lead-up), it’s not quite the top-shelf achievement I once imagined.

The collective power of a celebrity and a brand can make magic. The nature of that celebrity, though, has changed. Once, it was considered a power move to hire the most recognisable faces for your brand. Now, as media saturates us, it is increasingly fragmented and so it makes sense that fashion campaigns will target niche audiences.

Calvin Klein recently called on Jeremy Allen White, pretty much unknown if you haven’t seen television series The Bear, to be the face of its underwear. Who cares if you don’t know who White is? All you really need to know is that by hiring him, Calvin Klein is a cool brand, it notices people, it understands the zeitgeist and is a part of it. And it gets eyeballs: media monitoring agency Launchmetrics later said the campaign generated $US12.7 million in media value in just 48 hours.

Skims, Kim Kardashian’s underwear brand, does this extremely well – so well, in fact, that some pundits believe bagging a Skims campaign is better for a celebrity than appearing on the cover of Vogue – another former marker of mass appeal. Indeed, when singer Usher fronted a Skims campaign this year to coincide with his Superbowl performance, many drew comparisons to his Vogue cover, which came out around the same time.

On the cover, Usher was obscured by a gaggle of children and model Carolyn Murphy. In the Skims ad, he was solo and the star of the show. Last year, Skims cashed in on the popularity of The White Lotus, using actors Beatrice Granno and Simona Tabasco in Valentine’s Day advertising. The company also tapped podcaster Alex Cooper for its bridal campaign.

Taking an unexpected talent – like Granno and Tabasco, or White – and giving them the exposure of a luxury fashion brand is good for both sides. It’s different to the Victoria’s Secret playbook of hiring the best-known models; the new celebrity endorsement is more subtle – if you know, you know.