Fashion Brands

Two of the most-heard questions at any red carpet event are “who designed that dress?” and “what brand is behind that gown?” People care deeply about designer fashion brands, sometimes out of proportion to the clothes themselves. A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or other feature that distinguishes an organisation or product from its rivals in the eyes of the customer — and in fashion, that distinguishing mark is often worth more than the garment carrying it.

Name Brands, Private Label and Price Points

Name brands are distinguished from generic and store brands. A private label brand is owned by a retailer, giving that retailer exclusive control of the fashion brand: the clothes can be designed and made by others, but the name, pricing and distribution belong to the store. Some brands are exclusive to a particular retailer by agreement, where the designer or clothing company licenses the name; in other cases the retailer owns the brand outright. Having a popular name brand is often an important factor in the success of a clothing company, because the name carries trust and recognition from one product to the next.

Brands are segmented by price point. Some are priced for mass merchants such as Walmart or Target; others are luxury lines marketed through high-end retailers such as Neiman Marcus or Bloomingdale's. Haute couture sits at the extreme — exclusive custom-fitted clothing constructed by hand from start to finish, in expensive and often unusual fabrics, sewn with extreme attention to detail by the most experienced sewers. Brands are also defined by category: Nike, adidas and Under Armour read as fitness apparel brands, while others are associated with outerwear, footwear or skiwear.

Brand Extension and the 'Hottest Brand' Lists

A successful brand rarely stays in one category. Designers and companies extend their brands into fragrances, shoes and accessories, home textiles and decor, luggage, eyewear, furniture and even hotels — each extension renting the name's reputation to a new product. Social media and online marketing have changed how that reputation is built and kept: fashion blogs play an important role in the development and longevity of brand popularity, and a brand's heat can now rise or cool in public, in numbers everyone can see.

That visibility produces the rankings. Every year — sometimes every quarter — fashion search companies analyse the behaviour of online shoppers to determine the hottest brands and products, using their own search data or data from Google, Facebook and other sources, monitoring engagement, conversion and sales worldwide to build an index. Other lists are less formal: blogs publish “top fashion brands”, “hottest fashion brands” and “brands you should know” lists constantly. Where the data comes from, and whether such posts are truly accurate, is always worth asking — a ranking is a marketing product as well as a measurement.