Follow the Herd – Balmain x H&M 2015
The Balmain x H&M collection released in November of this year sparked mass hysteria (in England especially) among young people who wanted to get their hands on a piece of Balmain without having to pay Balmain prices. What is really interesting to note is the fact that it all started off as a collection for a few people in the “know” wanting to buy something edgy and different and who were fashion fans from the very beginning. The part of the collaboration that really intrigued me was the effect it had on social media and its connection to celebrities and models that sparked a massive following from people that would never have cared to buy such a thing in the first place. The “Balmain phenomenon” could essentially be seen as a sort of social experiment that could be used to observe the effect of celebrities endorsing products, the never-ending sexualization of clothing and people in advertisements, and how the youth just absorbs this information and feels as if more consumption means more social acceptance. An interesting connection to our Networks class would be that in this information cascade about the collection (say through media such as Instagram) people are imitating the behavior of others, and liking what everyone else likes. Not only is it behavior imitation, it almost certainly seems like mindless imitation on top of that.
In the article from the New York Times the H&M store in England was used as a reference point for describing the chaos that ensued after the collection was made available to the public. The day started out with a line of people in front of the store that would later devolve into a stampede of shoppers running into the store. These people hadn’t slept for days waiting outside and had travelled from across the continent to get their hands on clothing that would go directly onto Instagram before it was even worn in front of a mirror. The scene was described as a mass frenzy where people tried to get their hands on everything they could. After seeing the H&M website crash following the release of the collection, and the London store running out of merchandise within 30 minutes of opening, it can be pretty accurate to assume that these shoppers found themselves in a position where it was popular to “follow the crowd”, literally and figuratively; also, that Balmain had a spectacular social media campaign. In this day and age where people only want more of the Kardashians (yes, they were used to advertise the collection) and less of their own family it can be said that social media is truly the best marketing tool of this generation and at the same time the biggest problem when it comes to watching our youth become one mass entity lacking any uniqueness in thought or preference.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/fashion/release-of-hm-x-balmain-collection-creates-chaos-in-london.html?_r=0