LVMH brands such as Dior and Louis Vuitton historically partnered with big screen stars and musicians. Tennis player Naomi Osaka was the first athlete to sign on in 2021 as a Louis Vuitton ambassador. Since then, both brands have expanded their roster of athletes to include the following (clockwise from top left): surfer Kauli Vaast; sprinter Elaine Thompson Herah; basketball player Victor Wembanyama; soccer player Alex Morgan, swimmer Léon Marchand; tennis player Carlos Alcaraz; and Osaka.Illustration by AFP via Getty Images (Vaast
The Paris 2024 Olympics has sold a record-setting 8.6 million tickets. But audiences may be unaware that they will be witnessing luxury fashion’s takeover of the world’s biggest sporting event.
For the privilege of having its brands on constant display, luxury’s largest conglomerate LVMH has invested €150-million ($224.7-million) to become a premium sponsor of the Olympics, becoming the first company of its kind to do so. Winning athletes will receive their medals on trays designed by Louis Vuitton in the brand’s iconic Damier canvas; the medals are made by the LVMH-owned jeweller Chaumet.
Sports and fashion have always had a symbiotic relationship. But while athletic-apparel giants, including Nike and Under Armour, have inked lucrative partnerships with superstar athletes Michael Jordan and Tom Brady, luxury fashion has historically courted fans in the world of elite sports, such as tennis, polo, sailing and golf. But in the past few years, social media has transformed the worlds of sports and fashion into global industries with universal appeal – that wield major pop-culture influence.
Just as art and artists do, sports and athletes “give you high visibility and a global language,” writes Luca Solca, the head of luxury goods research at Bernstein Sports, in an e-mail. “Everyone looks up to and respects sport performance, as well as artistic beauty and invention.”
Illustration by Eric Chow
Luxury fashion now wants to get in on the game. And athletes, as newly powerful influencers, can help them go for gold.
LeBron James starred in a Louis Vuitton campaign this year. Simone Biles covered Vogue in 2020; GQ magazine launched its first global sports issue in 2022; and American track star Sha’Carri Richardson is Vogue’s digital cover star for August. On the runway, Olympic skier Eileen Gu has walked for Louis Vuitton and graced the cover of Harper’s Bazaar Singapore. Designers, including Thom Browne, Wales Bonner, Martine Rose and Prada, have all dressed men’s and women’s soccer teams around the world, on and off the field. The scale of LVMH’s Olympics sponsorship is the culmination of an extended courtship, solidifying the official union of luxury fashion and sports.
This marriage has already borne fruit. For his part, Solca says that “the most important impact is the buzz around the brand,” which he measures in terms of social-media traction, Google hits or likes per post, and in-store traffic and sales growth.
In February of 2023, the Washington Wizards’ forward Kyle Kuzma posted a photo on Instagram wearing a US$3,000 puffer jacket by the designer Rick Owens on a tunnel walk – the pregame arena entrance that athletes use as a runway and brands use as a marketing opportunity. The piece sold out in days on Montreal-based e-commerce platform Ssense, according to the retail analytics firm Edited. Cameron Payne of the Phoenix Suns had a similar effect on a US$1,050 button-down shirt – kiwi in colour and printed with parakeets – by the Italian brand Bottega Veneta. The product had to be restocked on the brand’s American e-commerce site four times. Richardson fronted the recent campaign for Nike’s collaboration with French label Jacquemus, the ne plus ultra of Instagram-friendly fashion brands.
Illustration by Eric Chow
When Caitlin Clark went viral for wearing a Prada satin blazer and matching miniskirt to the 2024 WNBA draft, it marked the first time the Italian brand had dressed an athlete for any professional basketball draft. That viral moment was seen as creating an opening for female athletes to sign luxury brand partnerships. Clark’s stylist Adri Zgirdea told WWD that luxury brands typically wait five years to dress an athlete, ensuring they can generate sustained buzz before they invest in them. “This is a clear example that brands are paying attention and could lead to more players collaborating with major fashion brands in the future,” said Zgirdea.
Daniel-Yaw Miller, who was recently named the first-ever sports correspondent for the fashion trade publication The Business of Fashion, says that people have grown tired of typical influencers and celebrities. (LVMH is part of a group of investors who hold a minority interest in BoF, which maintains full editorial independence.) Lately, he says, brands and fashion marketers find athletes better value for money, because, Miller says, “they tend to have a more natural connection to their fans” than lifestyle or fashion influencers who are sometimes perceived purely as brand shills. Athletes, however, sell performance, excellence and discipline.
That’s why LVMH – which Miller calls “the Nike of the fashion world” – has been sponsoring emerging French athletes with “compelling stories.” The LVMH-owned juggernaut Dior, for example, named 15 Olympic athletes as brand ambassadors, including the Hawaiian surfer Carissa Moore and Japanese fencer Misaki Emura, while Louis Vuitton signed the swimmer Léon Marchand. LVMH, Miller says, understands “that sport is an arena that they need to be in a granular level, as well as a macro level.”
Illustration by Eric Chow
He doesn’t think such sponsorships are suddenly going to convert sports fans into luxury shoppers. Rather, he says, brands want to tap into “the allure, the thrill, the adrenalin” of the sports world, and that athletes are “some of the most aspirational” figures brands can incorporate in their marketing campaigns. “And I think for a long time, that went unnoticed by fashion.” Fashion is taking notice now.
Two years ago, LVMH owner and CEO Bernard Arnault, the third richest man in the world, said that Louis Vuitton, the crown jewel in his company, was “not just a fashion brand,” but a “cultural brand” at the centre of sports, music and art. Part of that strategy involved tapping Pharrell to lead men’s wear at the brand. Another is sponsoring the Olympics.
With the Olympics sponsorship, Arnault appears to be applying that strategy across his company. It appears that no matter which athletes bring home a medal, this level of brand exposure means Arnault has already won.
On Friday, 1.5 billion viewers were expected to tune in to watch the opening ceremony for what Bloomberg calls the “first luxury games.” For the first time in Olympic history, the event was not held in a stadium, but along the Seine. Between the pomp and circumstance of the affair, did they notice the Dior fashion presentation or the gradient cascading down the silk lapels of Team France’s custom Berluti suits? Are sports fans the audience for luxury fashion?
Arnault is betting €150-million on it.
“Fashion stands to gain a lot from working in sport,” says Miller. The industry understands that “it’s not just a certain audience we need to market to – it’s literally everyone.”