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If you didn’t attend the Frieze art fair in Los Angeles, you could be blithely unaware that the long-disappeared French fashion label Poiret is being resuscitated as a beauty brand owned by Korean department store chain Shinsegae International. Its 50ml jars of firming cream are priced at $440, but Poiret representatives doled them out to Frieze attendees for the price of their email addresses.
Frieze is key to Poiret’s strategy to introduce itself in the US and Europe this year. First, by handing out serums and lotions and collecting contact information from the fair’s 35,000 mostly wealthy art fair attendees. Behind the scenes, Poiret and Shinsegae hope Frieze will help them build a wholesale business for their brand in the West. They see the art fair as a chance to show luxury retailers and department stores like Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman that they can support a global luxury beauty brand with the savvy marketing and seven-figure financing that the Frieze effort requires.
“The content can be very helpful when we speak with them,” says Geesun Choi, Poiret’s senior brand manager. “We want to build up a fundamental base to introduce us to the global marketplace. We are at the starting level because nobody knows about us.”
Poiret wasn’t alone in using Frieze as a springboard for an audience reset. Later that evening, Robert Triefus, chief executive of Stone Island, was doing his best to use the art fair association to dispel a notion that the rugged Italian yachting wear brand is a hip hop label. That misperception developed over several years following collaborations with Supreme, and the adoption of the label’s clothes by musical artist Drake, who has been wearing jackets bearing Stone Island’s distinctive removable buttoned logo patch for years.
To nudge the brand’s perception away from hip hop, Stone Island signed a contract as a two-year sponsor of Frieze. Then it hauled part of its archive to a Los Angeles event space, where it packed its calendar over four days with talks and dinners attended by fans of the brand.
Triefus has a standard response when asked how to describe Stone Island. “I tell them that Jony Ive sent his team to Stone Island’s headquarters in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy,” Triefus says, referencing more than once the designer known for his work designing the iPhone among other Apple products.
Frieze, which first launched in London in 2003, has long been supported by brand sponsorships, though it has never matched the draw of the larger Art Basel. Frieze’s expansion around the world — to New York in 2012, Los Angeles in 2019 and Seoul in 2022 — has made it a strategic linchpin for brands that seek the alchemy of educated, affluent, art-interested audiences in New World regions. Endeavor Group bought a majority stake in Frieze in 2016 and added the talent agency’s considerable marketing assets to the mix.
Emily Glazebrook, commercial director of Frieze, says the fair sees more sponsorship offers than it needs. “We’re very lucky to have lots of luxury brands’ interest,” she says. Those that made the cut this year, in addition to Poiret and Stone Island, include LVMH-owned Ruinart champagne and the fine watch house Breguet, known for its timepieces’ many complications (and for being Marie Antoinette’s favorite watchmaker).
Glazebrook notes that adding Seoul to Frieze’s global tour drew a fresh set of interested sponsors. “In Seoul we’ve seen real interest in global brands that haven’t established themselves in that market,” she says.
To encourage the art connections of its sponsors, Frieze maintains an in-house agency, Frieze Studios, to serve as a matchmaker between brands and artists they can sponsor as part of their installation. Ruinart chose Los Angeles-based artist and activist Andrea Bowers, who selected a climate change theme and called it “Conversations with Nature”. Part of it included long satin ribbons imprinted with climate-friendly slogans that attendees could take away with them.
Poiret will next introduce itself at Frieze New York in May. In Los Angeles, Choi spent four days helping man a replica of the brand’s store counters, cosmetics and skincare products. At the door was a digital roulette wheel — or possibly more like Wheel of Fortune. Attendees shared their email address in return for a spin, and walked away with gifts or product samples based on where the wheel landed.
Shinsegae bought Poiret in 2015 and initially planned to launch ready-to-wear first. It showed only two seasons before shifting strategies in 2018 to strictly beauty, at least for now. The skincare and cosmetics, made in Switzerland and Japan, were sold first in Korea. Poiret launched e-commerce and is available globally online. For the month of March, beginning with Frieze LA, shipping to the US is free, Choi says, in an attempt to encourage Americans to order.
To help Poiret reach an American audience, Frieze shared lists of Los Angeles-based influencers and VIP guests, which Poiret culled by pouring through press and social media accounts, inviting those who made the cut to an opening reception. Choi hoped to emerge with a healthy stack of creative brand ambassadors for future deployment.
Poiret’s website soon splashed the art fair across its homepage, showing images from the fair rather than its own products. Choi stood watching a fair attendee spin the roulette wheel. “This is a big commitment for us,” she says with a grin. “You give something, you get something.”
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