Tiffany & Co teams up with Nike for a cringe collaboration

I have spoken about the new Tiffany & Co before (here).

The good news? Post LVMH acquisition Tiffany & Co saw its valuation climb by a billion, the bad news? The Tiffany and Nike collab - you never knew you needed and judging by the photos you certainly did not want.

"Cringe" has a new lower bar. There, I said it.

OK, Dior did an Air Jordan, and Louis Vuitton shattered auction records with their Nike (late) Virgil Abloh collabs, and luxury brands are going full ape for collabs with sports brands. So it's nothing new.

But honestly, as they say in French - "tout ca pour ca" (all this for this).

In the photos above basketball superstar LeBron James is seen wearing the shoes, and what seems to be a jacket (still no word is this is a limited offering for friends and family, or one-off, or something Kanye West might have "designed" so much it is - to go back to the word again - cringe).

Now the shoes. Yes, what about the shoes? Nothing to write home about yet here I am writing a full blog post about them. Seriously, if this is what they were able to come up with, I honestly wonder why bother inject the effort. Truth be told I am wondering if any effort at all was injected in this.

When Fendi did their baguette with Tiffany, they came up with something truly beyond. But then Nike is certainly not Fendi. And now I am wondering if Tiffany is Tiffany. But hey, they said it themselves "not your mother's Tiffany", it's your LeBron James' Tiffany. 

Heaven help us.

Tiffany & Co - not your mother's brand.

It all started with "Not your father's Oldsmobile".

"Not your mother's Tiffany" - Tiffany & Co just unveiled their first post-LVMH acquisition campaign. Mark Riston loves it, Quirino Malandrino is appalled (both are communication giants). Well, to begin with, I am not the correct target audience for the campaign, so I am a bit torn as to the relevance of what I am saying (to quote the sitcom friends "No uterus, no opinion"). 

The campaign goes after young women (the ones featured in the ads are all 20 something self-confident females), telling them that Tiffany has indeed evolved and changed since their mother's days. With a new generation ditching "classic" wedding bands in the US, with many no longer interested in family heirloom jewelry, it seems fitting that LVMH wants to dust a brand which is no longer "cool". Mind you if you look at other brands within the LVMH stable - there is a very discernable pattern: Louis Vuitton has gone full Virgil Abloh and is now having a Nike Air Force 1 sneaker and an NBA product tie up, Celine has ditched the Phoebe Philo philosophy to go after the cool-trust-fund kids with Hedi Slimane, Kenzo has little if anything to do it with its own founder's principles. 

Truth be told however, Antoine Arnault, the son of Bernard Arnault who is the CEO of LVMH, did a superb job revitalizing luggage brand Rimowa, and is now the man handling Tiffany. Mind you there are ways and others of revitalizing a brand. When Hermes hired Martin Margiela as a creative director Jean-Louis Dumas the then chairman of Hermes asked the designer if he was going to cut the (famous handbag model) Kelly in two. What Margiela did however is produce what is now highly-saught after collections for the brand. He also introduced a 6-hole button which when sewn would produce the letter "H" in threads. 

But I digress.

Perhaps the whole point of the Tiffany campaign is simply to make ink spill about it - which works well (consider this article as an example!). LVMH has rescued many brands from dustiness - who knows? They might pull a miracle with the stale Emilio Pucci. If non-LVMH owned Courreges is any measure, 60s esthetic is currently all the rage. 

Small note, Oldsmobile is dead. So I am wishing Tiffany all the best.