A funny thing happened when I was finishing this essay. Boarding a flight to Scotland, I started the book I’d brought with me, intending to read until the seatbelt sign turned off and I could open my laptop. The novel is ‘The Flamethrowers’ by Rachel Kushner, which was chosen by someone in my book club. I didn’t know anything about it, and was surprised to find it begins with an account of a woman riding her motorbike at high speed through the Nevada desert. “Speed is the causeway between life and death and you hoped you came out on the side of life,” she says on page 13.
This essay is also about speed, albeit in a less extreme sense. Given that the Monaco Grand Prix is this weekend, I thought I’d explore fashion’s current flirtation with fast cars (and motorbikes). I hope you enjoy.
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Fashion has its foot on the gas once again. Over the past few seasons, the influence of motorsports has been popping up all over the place. Artist Cory Arcangel designed a custom stripe for Phoebe Philo, four racing-inspired lines which flutter across campaign images and leggings like rally flags in the wind. (Her first campaign also showed Daria Werbowy on a Ninja motorbike.) Vogue Italia recently featured a Formula 1 cover shoot, starring Irina Shayk posing at Ferrari HQ. The issue focused on the sport’s attempt to become more inclusive of women, shaking off the cobwebs of its conservative past.
The magazine’s cover also bore the slanted, zoomy red typeface I’ve noticed across a few recent Vogue Australia issues, too. A symbol of the publication making haste towards a new era? Meanwhile Balenciaga furthered its motocross love affair with another AlpineStars collaboration, and Diesel continues to stick by its hedonistic, petrol-adjacent vibe.
Elsewhere in fashion, German alt darling Ottolinger teamed up with Puma for a collection inspired by motorsport and science fiction. The campaign saw model (and Threads of Conversation podcast guest) Alva Claire astride a bright green motorbike, paired with the tagline ‘The faster you are, the more fun you have’. As for the clothing, the collection featured futuristic bodysuits printed with trompe l’oeil biker leathers and office-ready suits and ties. This blend of motorsport and commerce reflects not only fashion trends (biker chic, office siren), but also the meeting of corporate minds. After all, fashion and motorsport are proving lucrative bedfellows.
I emailed Business of Fashion’s Daniel-Yaw Miller to get his thoughts on the subject - he’s a brilliant reporter whose beat is the intersection of fashion and sport. “In recent years there's been an abundance of new money (especially from the US and Middle East) which has poured into F1 and other motorsports competitions,” he told me. “That, along with the fact that F1 is slowly becoming more hospitable to its female audience, means that it makes it an easier sell for brands to invest in collaborations.”
Speaking of which, the Ottolinger collection wasn’t Puma’s first foray into the world of high-velocity fashion. In October last year, Miller broke the news of A$AP Rocky being appointed creative director of its Formula 1 partnership, with his first collection dropping the following month. According to the press release, “Rocky will focus his creative attention on several Grands Prix, beginning in Miami in 2024… It is planned that by 2025, Rocky will be fully immersed into the holistic product creative designs for all of the PUMA x F1 product spanning from racewear to fanwear to fashion.”
“When you start to look at the fashion collaborations that happen with F1, a lot of them are streetwear-based,” explained Noelle Faulkner, a reporter and trend forecaster who specialises in automotive. “Palm Angels is a sponsor of one of the teams - and they’re a fairly streetwear-leaning brand.” But despite some luxury brands beginning to get in on the action, Faulkner says they’re still missing the opportunity for more impactful collaborations in the space.
“I would love to see more high-end brands start to engage with F1 on a sponsorship or placement level. Because it's kind of crazy when you start looking at who all the big sponsors are in F1 and you see this gap, especially when there are a lot of women, high-net worth individuals and fashion fans watching these races. And the cars are covered in crypto or random tech brands you've never heard of. So there's this real opportunity - aside from the watch brands that you see on the driver's wrist - for luxury fashion to be a part of that sport.”
“At the end of the day, I really feel like a lot of those streetwear collabs were also just another way to sell more merch to fans who are already buying merch, making their own merch, going to races, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars,” says Faulkner. “I think there's a real fast fashion element of racing merchandise that needs to be addressed.”
Another reason for the proliferation of streetwear collaborations might be due to how easy it is for merchandise to masquerade as streetwear. By its nature, streetwear usually comprises casual silhouettes made from accessible fabrics such as cotton jersey. It emphasises symbolism and affiliation via logos and graphics, as opposed to the complex design or expensive construction of high fashion. This is a very easy language to imitate, allowing sports and brands to create endless merch drops that can be produced quickly and cheaply, but marketed as meaningful under the guise of this streetwear value system.
It’s a trick we’ve seen in the wider fashion industry, too. We’re in a period that I think of as ‘the merchification of fashion’, where what you wear has become simplified into the most basic signal about who you are. I think it’s partly tied to cultural factors - for one, our attention spans are so frayed that the language of fashion has become all about quick, easy legibility. I also think it has to do with the fusion of politics and social media. We’re neatly sorted into groups, and what we wear has become a vital part of signalling which group we belong to.
Lastly, as fashion continues cosying up to sport, and society continues chasing performance and longevity (Bryan Johnson being the most extreme example of this), the lines between fashion and function become ever more blurred. First it was athleisure, then Gorpcore. Now we’re on the cusp of the next iteration, signalled by partnerships like On X LOEWE and the upcoming LVMH-sponsored Paris Olympics. Formula 1 is also riding this wave. It might be less longevity-friendly, but its focus on new technology and man x machine excellence gives it a futuristic appeal.
But what about the environmental impact of all these endless F1 drops? “A lot of the racing drivers have their own fashion lines. And then the teams themselves have their own merchandise line. And then the races have their own merchandise line. And then the whole F1 as a whole has its own merchandise line,” Faulkner tells me. “So there's all these tiers of stuff to buy if you're a fan. And I just don't think anyone is buying that much.”
Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that such concerns will reduce the churn. Since the Netflix series Drive To Survive exploded in popularity a few years ago, new communities and generations around the world have become hooked on the sport. For F1, this means they need to cater to these new audiences, particularly Gen Z, by switching up their old-fashioned image. What do you do when you want to switch up your image? You start by changing your clothes.
For fashion, an industry grappling with the post-pandemic slowdown, F1 presents a pretty secure commercial opportunity. On the one hand, luxury brands are able to bolster their image with the old guard of fans, aligning with their affluent lifestyle of wealth, travel and spectatorship. For the newer, younger fans, F1 presents an opportunity for brands to tap highly-engaged, and increasingly female fandoms.
Without meaning to sound cynical, I also think that the merging of fashion and motorsport is also a symptom of mass ‘blobification’ (another word I’ve made up to describe the phenomenon we’re currently witnessing). The fashion industry is growing, and like a big hungry blob, it’s spreading into adjacent industries, making a land grab for the commercial opportunities they present. F1 is ripe for the taking.
But what about the other side of the arrangement, namely motorsport aesthetics showing up in fashion? Of course this isn’t a new thing - think of Thierry Mugler’s iconic 1992 motorbike bustier, or Prada’s Hotwheels-inspired heels from SS12.
“I think there's something in the appeal of personal power and personal freedom,” says Faulkner. “Especially something like a motorbike where it's just you, two wheels. We're at a time where so many of us are feeling really powerless, and so many of us are feeling like we don't have any control. Riding a motorbike dressed in your head-to-toe Alpine Stars Balenciaga is the epitome of being in control.”
Miller agrees. “Motorbikes also represent that rebellious, slightly obnoxious, in-your-face aspect of motorsport's appeal right now to fashion brands.” Still, it’s interesting to read the comments beneath the Ottolinger x Puma campaign video, which showed Alva speeding along an open road dressed in a bodysuit and Puma Mostro sneakers. Many criticised the brands for advertising riding without the proper safety gear. It highlights a disconnect we’ve seen in fashion before, whereby the ‘idea’ of the culture and the actual culture are out of sync.
I’m not excusing the more problematic side of this, namely cultural appropriation, but I think in general, fashion is an industry whose prerogative is to create costumes. Patchworking together popular culture, social trends and the overarching mood to create a mirror of our times. If you’ll excuse the pun, fashion is a vehicle for expressing our social psyche.
“The thing about fashion is it invites you to be part of the culture without having to fully immerse yourself in it,” says Faulkner. “You can cosplay being an F1 driver or a motorbike rider. Whatever the idea is behind that theme is a selling point for a lot of brands. When we talk about how fashion reflects our culture, I think that's what's behind a lot of what's going on right now. It's like cultural tourism in a way.”
As for safety concerns, the danger is part of the appeal. What we’re responding to is our desire for adrenaline, for rebellion, for something loud and visceral to shake us out of our algorithmically-flattened stupor. Fast vehicles fit the brief.
Fashion can be similarly emotional. One of the most meaningful things I came across in my research for this piece was F1 superstar Lewis Hamilton talking about his love of fashion, first on the BoF podcast back in 2020, and more recently in his May GQ cover interview, where he recalls attending his first fashion show back in 2007. Compared to the conservative, homogenous racing industry, Hamilton remembers his first impression of fashion as a place of diversity and freedom of expression. Fashion presented a tool of empowerment, one that Hamilton has wielded successfully to make him the best dressed man on the paddock and far beyond.
Not only has he used fashion to boost his own star power, but he’s arguably responsible for unlocking the potential of fashion in racing. “I look at David Beckham - he’s a style icon. Dennis Rodman is a basketball style icon. I feel like there was that gap with F1 because there were never any style icons,” said my friend Chynna Richardson, who’s covered F1 in her work for media platform Culted. “And the first person to do that is Lewis Hamilton.”
Something else interesting that came out of my conversation with Faulkner is the disconnect between the idea of racing and the mood of luxury car design and marketing more widely. Whilst the F1 track is often the starting point for new engine technology and safety enhancements, which are then adapted for mass produced cars, the aesthetics and mood of racing seem to be influencing fashion more than they’re influencing the car industry.
“In the automotive space, the idea of luxury now is something really quiet, something really understated. Something that doesn't feel like it's an embarrassing, obvious pollutant,” says Faulkner. “Big, gas-guzzling, loud cars - that’s pretty taboo now. But I don't think it's taboo in fashion yet to dress up in the paraphernalia that signals those fossil-fuelled, loud, aggressive cars.”
But will the love affair last? “It's very interesting to think about whether the taboo of luxury automotive will shift to being the taboo of fashion,” muses Faulkner. In her experience, however, these trends come in waves. “You'll see trend spotters and people that don't necessarily look at this all the time be like, ‘Oh, automotive and motorcycles are really hot in fashion right now. Like it's never happened before - but it has,” says Faulkner. “Like anything, there are cycles of flirtation.” Ultimately, fashion will continue to move in the direction of its two driving forces: our mood and our money.
Threads of the week
My favourite outfit ingredients of late. A Hugo Boss blazer I got for £6 at a charity shop, paired with a pair of vintage Comme des Garçons Homme Plus suit pants. On the left I’m wearing a Japanese football shirt and on the right it’s a vintage tee. Both pairs of boots are from Ann Demeulemeester - the heeled ones came from Vinted for a fraction of the RRP.
Loose Threads
I’m excited to read the new issue of this magazine.
How I look whilst writing this newsletter.
I haven’t listened to this yet but Holly Herndon is a very wise creative voice in the AI conversation (and many other conversations). Will be consuming it whilst stroking my chin on a big Scottish walk.
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#brilliantlyobserved. #bewilderinglyobvious!
Thank U for such #astuteanalysis!🙌🏿