TT Vol. 40

Khaite x Adidas, Simone Rocha x H&M, All In Motion

Feb 14, 2021

Clockwise from Top.

Print Advertising

We noticed a few different very online publishers/content creators showing off the print advertisements they had recently made. The newsletter Blackbird Spyplane in the Bard Free Press:

Exhibit A: A fashion newsletter advertising in a Hudson Valley newspaper

The podcast How Long Gone advertised in the Drunken Canal, a hyper local newspaper catering to the lower Lower East Side and East Chinatown:

This led me to figure out how much it would cost to place a tiny advertisement in the back of the New Yorker, where you regularly find off-brand companies like Go Lightly Cashmere, Jewelsmith and Chiltons taking up space. It turns out, for a small 1 inch x 1 inch black and white ad, over $6K? Definitely out of our budget!

Target’s Billion Dollar Activewear Brand

Last year, Target launched its activewear brand All In Motion, and recently publicized that it hit $1B in sales in less than a full year. To give an idea of the size of this business, Target says that:

In just one year, we sold 21 million pounds of hand weights and kettlebells — enough steel to build a second Eiffel Tower, and 7 million square feet of yoga mats — enough to cover 122 football fields!

With the pandemic deeply affecting supply chains, Target has seen its private label brands step up and drive its business forward. They have also made an effort to be inclusive by including, for an example, a model that is missing a hand and extremely diverse body types, with the merchandise available at extremely accessible price points.

As COVID eases, it will be interesting to see how many customers continue to stick with private label offerings, and how many move back to third party brands.

Simone Rocha x H&M

We are really into the Simone Rocha x H&M collection coming out March 11. Befitting her Hong Kong and Irish roots, there is plenty of pearls and tartan in the collection, and spans not only Women’s but also Men’s and Kid’s. Simone Rocha is one of the most successful independent female designers in the luxury space, and she’s still only 35. And her brother is a chef!

A few of our favorite looks:

Simone Rocha H&M — Flood Pants for Boys!

Raquel has been particularly vocal about buying the earrings come March.

Khaite x Adidas

Cate Holstein’s Khaite is launching another Adidas collaboration soon. We’ve been targeted with ads like this:

Khaite Adidas — As seen in our IG stories

The Navy and Tan colors were released last fall, and the Black version will be coming in March. We don’t really think of Khaite as a sneaker brand, and yet somehow these do work!

Hyper Focused Retail Concepts

We enjoyed reading about the Morioka Shoten bookstore in Tokyo that sells only one title at a time. Part art project, part retail experiment, the store rotates the book that is on sale each week. The owner speaking about his store:

He believed that a single book will offer deeper a understanding and closer relationship with the reader as well as the essential pleasure of book reading.

This prompted us to think about extending this to the fashion retail. Could something like this work to sell a different bag each week? Shoes? Jewelry? As the retail landscape evolves, we feel that companies are moving more towards curation and away from optionality.