BLACK COMME DES GARÇONS OR HOW TO REINVENT YOURSELF
With the outburst of 2008 financial crisis, people throughout the world saw their disposable income drop in great extent. This drop affected even HNWIs and regular luxury consumers, who realized they could not spend such large amounts of money on luxury fashion as they did prior to the crisis. This is when Black Comme des Garçons comes into play.
A new label as a consequence of 2008 crisis was created. Their response, a case worth of study.
- The label, born as a consequence of the 2008 crisis, intended to be a response to the lack of disposable income that people had at the time.
- Originally, the plan for this sub-label was to have it active only until financial stability was recovered.
- Its unexpected and rapid success made management change its initial strategy, establishing it as a permanent fixture.
As you will know - or at least have guessed - Comme des Garçons is a French term. Translated, the brand means "like boys": a name inspired by Françoise Hardy's 1962 track "Tous les garçons et les filles" (All the boys and the girls).
Rei Kawakubo is the trailblazing founder and designer of Comme des Garçons, and one of the most powerful women in fashion history.
Focusing on a sneaker-like strategy, and in response to the 2008 crisis, Comme des Garçons decided to create, in 2009, the sub-label "Black Comme des Garçons", which was supposed to be a sustainable response to the ongoing financial crisis and the lack of disposable income that people had at the time.
In other words, the Japanese brand's strategy was to create more affordable pieces of works that were already coveted in the Comme des Garçons' archive.
Black Comme des Garçons did also originally create a lot of wardrobe staples, including dresses, skirts, shirts...
The pieces from this sub-label were significantly much lower than mainline prices.
As the name suggests, the Black label focuses on popular silhouettes from the Comme des Garçons' archive; but also focuses on black pieces - as the name indicates.
Originally, the plan for this sub-label was to have it active only until financial stability was recovered.
However, the black sub-labelled found such an enormous success (most people who were former fans of the brand that could not afford it started buying it, regular buyers were in favour of these price reductions as they did not notice great changes on the fabrics, designs started to include stapples from the main line, its ongoing partnership with Nike, etc.) that management had no other option but to change its initial strategy.
Finally, it was decided that the black sub-brand was going to be established as a permanent fixture as a sub-label in the Comme des Garçon's universe.
When Black Comme des Garçons was first launched, there were just eleven points of sale distributed worldwide, which were supposed to last for 18 months - the initial approximation management performed regarding the duration of the economic crisis.
Nonetheless, the brand's management rectified and said that those 18 months were not strictly fixed, they were going to maintain those points of sales until the end of the crisis (despite the outcome resulted to be other quite different).
All in all, this black label focuses more on hard-to-cop leisurewear pieces, on the low key and unknown silhouettes, or even on silhouettes that have been neglected for a long time.
Nowadays, it is seen in very different forms: clothing, footwear or even fragrances!
