Branding the man: why men are the next frontier in fashion retail

(SAN FRANCISCO) – If you’re old enough to remember wearing matching corduroy jackets and pants then the following may be a road to nostalgia you won’t want to follow.

Then again plenty were happy to last Friday night, when roughly 500 people showed up at the Levi’s flagship store in San Francisco to celebrate the collaboration between the world’s preeminent jeans brand and the cultish retailer and design group, Opening Ceremony.

Opening Ceremony, with stores in New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo has been consistently collaborating with the likes of Chloe Sevigny and Spike Jones and creating limited-edition collections of downtown streetwear that begs the question: are you cool enough?

Plenty were on hand to cop a feel of their collaboration with Levi’s with a collection of 1980’s 505 corduroys in colors described as  teal, fuchsia, lavender, olive, curry, navy, and optical white. I haven’t heard the word “teal” since, oh, about 1987. A bicycle covered in teal corduroy marked the way, guerilla marketing style, in front of the Levi’s store (and supposedly others were placed throughout the downtown area.)

The party hubbub began on the ground floor of the Levi’s store where a special Opening Ceremony boutique/ pop-up installation was created just for the occasion, along with a stunning collection of visuals by photographer Ryan McGinley.

The very Shiny-Happy-People vibe seems just right for these dark days of retail. McGinley’s visuals includes shots of tender young things wearing the vivid corduroys while floating against an endless sky.

Opening Ceremony’s Humberto Leon and Carol Lim were on hand (with what appeared to be their entire families in tow) and were warmly greeted by fans and a retinue of hipsters one usually only sees  at 6AM when H&M is rolling out a limited-edition collection from Comme Des Garçons.

And while we didn’t see anyone wearing cords at this event, we’re pretty sure we’ll be hearing that nostalgic sound of two corduroy-encased thighs walking down the street Zirrh-Zurrh! Zirrh-Zurrh!… ahhh, it’s 1987 all over again.

The entire collection of cords are available at select Opening Ceremony and Levi’s stores as well as globally at specialty retailers such as Barneys, Fred Segal, Joan Shepp in the United States, and at Colette (Paris), Liberty (London), Lane Crawford (Hong Kong), Incu (Australia), Henrik Vibskov (Copenhagen and Oslo) and c2k (Istanbul).

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By now you’ve heard about fifteen people tell you they loved the Oprah/Letterman/Leno ad on the Superbowl, and heard the morning-after commentators tell you the winner was Snickers with the lovable Betty White and I-didn’t-know-he-was-still-alive Abe Vigoda.

Any guesses on how many ads ran? Sixty-eight, to be precise. So how many did you remember, and more importantly, did any of them really make you feel any differently about the advertised brand?

If you kept track during the three-plus hour event, you noticed the ads went from memorable (Snicker’s, the ETrade babies) to forgettable to just plain awful (Charles Barkley for Taco Bell).

Interestingly, fashion retailers steered clear of the Superbowl — not that they ever had a strong presence — with only Sketchers and Dockers contributing advertising. The latter went big with an ad that encouraged viewers to log onto their website to win a free pair of pants.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to plan for this and the website crashed within seconds of the ad airing. Good job, boys!

It’s clear that the Superbowl continues to be a kind of flexing of the muscles for advertisers with perhaps little to no expectation in translating that two million or more they spent into building the brand or converting customers.

But then you already knew that, and like me, you just sat back and watched the show: the equivalent to a small country’s gross national product being spent on thirty seconds of hot air.

See the full list of all sixty-eight ads here.

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There is a growing interest in what the men’s cosmetics industry has come to cautiously describe as “self-care”. A spa in Utah, for instance, reports that 35 percent of their clients are men. But the hard numbers are proving that the market for men’s grooming isn’t just a hunch. The men’s market for bath and shower products has increased exponentially with profits well over twenty million dollars a year. A December 2007 report from Packaged Facts (a market research firm) revealed that teenagers and tweens are potentially one of the most lucrative demographics for grooming products, with projected worldwide sales of nearly $1.9 billion.

Manufacturers are carefully testing the waters as men explore the benefits (real or imagined) of beauty and grooming products. A walk down the aisles of pharmacies and department store cosmetics departments reveals a host of new products geared towards men’s skincare, along with aftershaves, deodorants, and depilatories. Speaking of… er, hair removal,  more and more men are indeed shaving, trimming, and waxing away body hair, such that Nair — the hair removal lotion for women — recently launched a silver-bottled version for men. When Procter and Gamble decided to reposition its Old Spice brand as “Old Spice High Endurance” (like so many men’s grooming products, names are vaguely sexual), it did so with a website featuring a woman in a bikini with the tagline: “when she sweats it’s sexy. When you sweat, you stink.”

For the post-pubescent male that’s something they worry about, according to a recent story in the New York Times (“For Tween Boys, Masculinity in a Spray Can”, 01/31/10).  Unless you’ve been living under a rock, drugstore brands like Axe and Swagger (by Old Spice) you already know that young men have become keenly aware that to get the girl, you better smell like a (clean) man — and definitely not like a girl. Most of these products are riots of musk, lime, and insistently “soapy” fragrances. Axe’s new AxeVice, a body fragrance, comes with the tagline, “Turns Nice Girls Naughty.” Now There’s incentive.

But the ball — so to speak — is still in the girls’ court. According to research firm NPD, 41-percent of boys 8 – 18 say a girl is their best friend. And as we all know, women continue to be very influential when it comes to how men shop.

To a point.

Because I still find it interesting to see just how many young boys and men are shopping together, and more often than not, the leader of the pack calls the shots about what’s cool and what’s not. Unlike men even twice their age, young men are vain out of necessity: to “fit in,” and more importantly, get the girl.

Meanwhile their adult counterparts are partaking in not-so-typically manly spa treatments like facials and pedicures — but they’re doing it privately, and in places that don’t feature candles and flowers. The International Spa Association recently estimated that 31 percent of spa-goers are men — not too shabby, considering how relatively recent the trend.  Some provide screens in-between chairs so men don’t actually have to look at each other. The “man spa” offers plenty of privacy and things like flat-screen TV’s with plenty of sports channels. Bikini Cuts in Salt Lake City borders on a Hooter’s with a bevy of young women providing manicures — while wearing a bikini. But most importantly, the name of the treatment should sound “manly.” Said one spa owner, “Men are results oriented. Call it a foot repair and guys know what the result will be.”

Of course, anyone who’s used a gym lately has probably noticed that men are grooming a lot more than just their toes and feet. Suddenly grown men of 35 have the body hair equivalent of a 15-year old boy. “Manscaping” has become increasingly common with straight men — where previously it was an almost exclusive preoccupation of gay men, drag queens, and the occasional ballet dancer.

So much so that in 2007 Philips, Inc. launched the “Bodygroom” and became the first to officially target male hair “…beneath the chin, including those sensitive spots below the belt.” One can only imagine the terrible accidents that happened for the men who chose a wet razor to groom themselves in places that demand the deft use of a hand mirror.

Philips launched a wildly successful web campaign that featured a man in a white bathrobe extolling the virtues of his newly smooth, er, groin. But rather than show his groin they flashed images of nuts, carrots, and so on, with the claim that all that hair removal from the southern region adds an extra “optical inch” to that… carrot.

Meanwhile online shopping sites like Beauty.com and Drugstore.com are quickly researching the best way to position themselves with men — especially since so many men are increasingly buying their grooming products online. The question is: can they speak to their customer simply and effectively, without the silly puns and false machismo?

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