This week, a look at how fashion is using fashion merchandise to drive brands’ fans.
Branded baseball caps are gaining traction, providing an opportunity for consumers to tag themselves IRL.
Call it the TikTok effect. As diverse hashtagged aesthetics take hold on social media, consumers are turning to fashion brand styles to self-identify or voluntarily choose a lane. At the same time, established and aspiring brands are leaning into the sales and marketing opportunities that ball caps offer; they’re responding to demand by featuring logo styles that fit an on-the-moment vibe while putting access to their worlds within reach. Baseball caps have become a common use and brands are now building product categories based on the results it has received.
Once you hit the trend, it’s hard to lose it. Ball caps with a small and embroidered name of a brand have increasingly flooded the Instagrams of fashion fans. Versions from Alo Yoga, The Frankie Shop and Anine Bing have been big among style influencers. Meanwhile, the fall lookbooks and product releases of Aime Leon Dore and Loro Piana, respectively, show the industry’s faith in the trend’s longevity—by today’s standards, anyway.
It is not a new idea. Balenciaga-labeled hats have been worn by celebrities including Kylie Jenner and Rihanna since 2017. And while they were unbranded or inconspicuous, Succession’s 400 character accessories -$600 Loro Piana fueled the desire for a status cap again in 2021.
But the stickiness of the concept cannot be denied. In eighth place on fashion search engine Lyst’s men’s “hottest” products for the second quarter of 2022 was Polo Ralph Lauren’s classic cotton chino ball cap, which features his signature galloping icon on center of front panels. Lyst’s ranking is based on shoppers’ online shopping and social behavior.
And fashion brands that recently introduced baseball caps have plans to roll out more. For its part, Frame is playing on the trend through hotel collaborations. In 2021, she released styles including ‘The Carlyle’ or ‘Ritz Paris’ branded hats, as well as a small ‘Frame’ on a back panel. And on Thursday, she will launch a second Ritz Paris collection including a Ritz-branded cap available in three colors.
According to Frame co-founder and chief creative officer Erik Torstensson, the buzz surrounding Ritz’s original collection was among the biggest Frame has seen for a collaboration. This was fueled by stylish celebrity fans, including Hailey Bieber and Naomi Campbell, who were photographed wearing the pieces “in high fashion”. Items from the collection now sell for five to 10 times their retail value at resale locations.
“Merch continues to have a moment,” said Torstensson. “The [first] The Ritz Paris collection resonated so well because it is one of the most famous heritage brands in the world. And our collaboration democratized access – everyone can buy a baseball cap.”
Beyond sporting a celebrity or aspirational look, consumers are also collecting hats to get the gender-neutral, utilitarian look being touted by the fashion group. When worn with a white t-shirt, a pair of oversized pants and chunky shoes, a ball cap completes an influencer- and designer-approved outfit of the day.
Like Frame, Anine Bing debuted the brand’s ball hats in 2021. The company’s chief operating officer, Olivia Gentin, said the inspiration was “Princess Diana’s off-duty streetwear style,” a common touchpoint for the brand — and many others today – thanks to her eternity and ease. Additionally, introducing “a strong style” that offered brand “visibility” and “a piece of the brand at an opening price” was a goal. In the 18 months since then, the cap has continued to sell. It has become part of Anine Bing’s core collection of classics and the brand releases new colors every season. Anine Bing Marketing shows the hat worn with everything from activewear to dressy styles.
“We continue to innovate and build on our best-selling styles, season after season,” said Gentin. As such, the company is now looking at adjacent styles including branded visitors and hair accessories.
Likewise, sales of Alo Yoga brand hats have increased. Abby Gordon, the company’s chief design officer, said the introduction of the caps was a response to community demand for more ways to connect with the brand. But both Alo loyalists and first-time buyers, as well as men and women, are buying them, largely motivated by the styles’ “accessibility and versatility,” she said. She added that the hats have sold out every quarter and the collection has expanded to six more colors since the launch. Hats now have a permanent place in Alo’s product range.
The brands hats are set to stick around until at least spring 2023, if the new M65 Studio 5-year collection is any indication. Set to premiere at a New York Fashion Week runway show on Sept. 9, the brand’s spring line will include plenty of logo hats, designer Anthony Hendrickson confirmed to Glossy. The styles will round out Hendrickson’s overall vision for an “effortless,” “Y2K” look, inspired by “what people are wearing on the street.”
And according to data from distributor Research and Markets, the global baseball cap market will continue to grow. It was projected to see a compound annual growth of 6.6% starting in 2020, to reach $24.2 billion by 2026.
But a strong brand must come before the goods, for any company aiming to succeed in the space.
Amsterdam-based Bart Kooi, who also works as an independent marketer at Calvin Klein, has been building his first fashion business since May 2020. So far, he only sells branded hats.
At the height of the pandemic, Kooi launched the Instagram account Cabmate, intended to be a creative digital outlet for humor. He chose his name “sticky, cosmopolitan” after seeing the word in a newspaper story about Jon Weiser, founder of the iconic NYC grocer Charivari. And he created a logo for it using a font he considered modern yet familiar.
Cabmate’s focus on masculine-feminine, minimalist ’90s style quickly attracted a large A-list following. Rita Ora, fashion media veteran Katie Grand and influencer Camille Charriere are among the 11,000 Instagrammers who engage with its curation of decades-old images of Kate Moss and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.
When a friend encouraged him to “do something more” with the account to allow followers to “get the vibe” described in the posts, Kooi decided to release the ball caps based on their unique unisex simplicity, he said. . Through a Shopify site set up to sell in 27 countries, he has since created a strong side hustle selling caps. Each of the eight available styles features “Cabmate” in contrasting embroidery and retails for around $45. France, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands are Cabmate’s main sales markets, and all of the company’s growth to date has been organic, Kooi said. He declined to share sales figures.
“People wear our hats because they want to be part of this community — to show they’re part of the inner circle or ‘in the know,’” he said. “The caps are good quality, but they are just basic caps. They buy them for the brand.”
Of course, much of what’s behind the logo cap’s newfound longevity is also working to give a once-tired outfit a boost, as has been recently and widely reported. As such, the branded baseball cap is not the “new branded undergarment”, so to speak. Instead, according to Gentin, “There’s a need for both inside [shoppers’] the wardrobe. They are both here to stay.”
Within Our Coverage
‘Our business is different’: Why fashion rent has resisted inflationary pressures
In the face of inflation, URBN embraces a diversified audience strategy
More retailers are asking for RFID tags, as TikTok calls out counterfeit products in stores
