Did you buy a box of A$AP Rocky’s Krispy Kremes last month? Or a notebook? Lighter maybe? In case you missed it, the US rapper and bona fide style-page star opened a New York-style bodega at Selfridges, selling more than 150 products curated by the man himself, and in a lot of cases featuring his brand name – or that of the creative arm of his “Mob” collective, AWGE.
If heavy metal is more your thing, a Metallica collection, designed by Justin O’Shea and his luxury streetwear label SSS World Corp, is also ripping it up in the same store, coinciding with the UK leg of the metal band’s tour. Missed out on Beyoncé’s Formation world tour? Get on over to shop.beyonce.com and you can still pick up the HOLD UP Jogger with its tiny embroidered baseball bat and feel like a queen.
Meanwhile, Taylor Swift’s online store is doing good business on a selection of snake-themed pieces, in homage to the video for Look What You Made Me Do, including two coiling serpent rings – in silver or gold and studded in zicron crystals.
Merch has got better. Next level better. It’s been building for a while, but now official merchandise is officially cool and it’s opening up a whole new world of credible fashion browsing, people. While a passion for vintage band T-shirts still shows no signs of abaiting, the improved design and quality of new merch is bringing it closer to fashion. A rifle through the wardrobe of The Chain’s James Massiah reveals two things: 1. He loves a black T-shirt, and 2. He loves them even more so if they nod to his (musically credible) idols – “Ashanti, Travis Scott, The Last Poets, Funkadelic … I love to buy merch at concerts.”
For this trend, as with most things in life, we can blame self-confessed renaissance man Kanye West, who knows a commercial opportunity when it looks him in the eye. In 2016 his international pop-up Pablo shops, selling Cali Thornhill DeWitt designed items, raised merch to a new level. And since then, everyone else has tried to follow suit. Even the old hands – last year, Black Sabbath and Slayer created partnerships with streetwear superbrand Supreme to bring their T-shirts to a new generation.
Justin Bieber is another merch pro. Ahead of his Purpose tour in 2016, The Purpose Tour collection, which includes Vetements-inspired T-shirts, track pants, hoodies and sweatshirts, was developed with Universal Music Group’s merchandise and brand management company Bravado. He played an extremely brand-savvy game by making some styles only available at certain gig venues, and one unique version only during the interval. (Comfort break or T-shirt queue? You decide.) It’s the Supreme very, very limited drop technique, which those who witnessed queues round the block for Kendrick Lamar’s on-tour merch pop-up in New York’s Soho can also bear witness to.
Associations with a high-end designer does wonders for an artist’s merch-making potential. A$AP Rocky has collaborated with JW Anderson and Guess (you could buy the Guess sweatshirts at his bodega), indie band the xx joined forces with Calvin Klein and – the other way around – model of the moment Gigi Hadid’s latest Tommy Hilfiger Rock Tour collection featured merch-style sweats and baseball caps. The show was also held at iconic London venue The Roundhouse.
There’s a streetwear aesthetic to this wave of merch that mirrors the fashion world’s current embrace of streetwear – a leaning towards jersey hoodies, T-shirts and trackie bottoms, with logos and slogans featuring large.
It’s about hitting the right note, too, with messaging. Californian sister-trio Haim, for example have gone for bold-and-ballsy slogan tees with messages such as “Go Haim or Go Home” and “WTF is a Haim”, modelled by the girls themselves (in 1970s style) and sold on their dedicated merch site. Harry Styles has tuned into the altruistic trend with his “Treat People With Kindness” messaging across tote bags and sweatshirts in blush, black and white. Swift is happy simply with pushing her album and song titles. And of course a Look What You Made Me Do tee. The only response to which is “Buy a Taylor Swift sweatshirt?”
