How to Engage Gen Z with Luxury

More and more luxury brands are celebrating the talent and in turn the process behind their product in an attempt to engage with younger consumers - a generation who have become obsessed with the behind the scene narrative.

The tried and tested formulas are either a slow mo, soft focus Youtube film, or inviting a group of influencers to the head office to see (and share) the process.

Alexander McQueen have taken this one step further by recreating their Clerkenwell design studios in the public space above their Bond Street store.

The latest exhibition is celebrating the brands long running love affair with Roses, but more importantly the team who are responsible for the mind-bending make of these incredible pieces.

The centre piece of the show is a royal red taffeta gown from the recent AW 19 show, a piece that wouldn’t ordinarily be displayed in store as an item for sale.

It greets you at the top of the stairs and immediately halts your ability to focus on anything else in the room. 

What is undeniably head-spinning in the construction of this piece, I can’t imagine how someone could design something like this and possibly foresee how it could be pieced together in fabric and then worn by a moving body…

Along side the dress is a captivating film which shows Judy Halil (head of McQueen atelier) talking through this building process, from the internal corset, to the sculpting of the to roses which dominate the skirt, to the final fitting on the house model.

Skilled workers & technical talent have always been in short supply in the UK and with Brexit on the horizon it is likely to get worse. For so long we have had a global reputation for pumping out the Creative Directors of all the major fashion houses of Kering and LVHM, these roles felt like the pinnacle of any graduates career aspirations.

Little regard to the teams that exists behind these titles have ever been really celebrated, this exhibition I hope will go a small way to change this and inspire a new generation of graduates to the possibilities further than the design studios of the major luxury brands.