‘Everything you do going forward, you can’t do anything the traditional way.’ (Ahrendts, 2013)
Establishing a strong connection between heritage and youth is a challenge that many traditional brands in the luxury sector are actively seeking to surmount, and, as the traditional values previously placed on tailoring are less relevant to younger consumers, it is increasingly important for brands to adapt their overarching strategies with an emphasis on reaching the next generation of customers. Millennial consumers are more connected to brands that take them forward instead of back (Stylus 2013: Online), therefore, brands must find ways of communicating to a modern consumer that, whilst tradition is important, there is more to tailoring than provenance and the past.
Capturing the momentum of this consumer is vital, yet, so often luxury brands comfortably target and reach their existing customer base in the over thirty-five age bracket, and risk losing the next generation of consumers by communicating messages, which are not resonant TO younger men (Danziger (2013) in Sherman: Online). The digital landscape has revolutionized the way that consumers research and interact with brands in the twenty-first century (Robb, 2013) and modern consumers expect a higher level of engagement from brands, whether it is on the Web, on their Smartphone or in a physical store. Whilst heritage and history are highly valued by luxury tailoring brands and their consumers, this report deciphers consumer culture to explore opportunities to enhance and evolve core brand values across different platforms, to find new and innovative ways of communicating traditional tailoring to the modern world.
Fuelled by the global phenomenon of luxury menswear, forward-thinking brands such as Thom Sweeney and Berluti are actively seeking to tap into this younger end of the market, pursuing exciting new business opportunities in the luxury tailoring sector to meet the desire for affluent, mediasavvy young men to look smart, sophisticated and solvent despite uncertain economic times (Conti: 2013).
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