Where fashion and food find their intersection, new opportunities for brands arise to innovate and connect with more varied audiences. Recent examples include a collaboration between Lidl and Nik Bentel that has piqued the interest of both fashion lovers and day-to-day consumers. This unlikely collaboration between a worldwide grocery retailer and a designer known for his imaginative and innovative approach outshines the competition.
It was during London Fashion Week that Lidl and Bentel unleashed the now-ubiquitous ‘croissant bag’ as a direct result of Lidl’s bakery. A very limited amount of the absurdist garments together with everyday grocery items moved extremely fast, showing just how full of potential the combination really is. This was a different kind of collaboration from others because it used the most iconic parts of the Lidl brand and reimagined them into a highly desired high-fashion accessory. The success of the collaboration ran deep, even finding the croissant bag available on By Rotation, a fashion rental platform catering to making fashion both more sustainable and accessible for fashionistas.
Greggs X Primark Sausage Roll Merchandise: Where High Street Fashion Meets High Street Food
The other recent collaboration in food and fashion is between Greggs, the favorite British bakery chain, and the UK fashion retailer Primark. When apparel hoodies, t-shirts, and boxer shorts featuring sausage roll designs were launched, the place the food company held in British popular culture was in evidence. That line, released in Primark stores, sold out in the wink of an eye. It was a resounding yes to brand loyalty without borders. Greggs and Primark reached out to their audience in the lightest and carefree way possible with loads of humor and nostalgia mottled all over their work.
Kate Spade X Heinz: A Capsule Collection Based On Ketchup
In June 2024, a capsule of gourmet accessories and clothes dropped inspired by ketchup from the unlikely collaboration of Kate Spade and Heinz. This collaboration teamed up the ketchup imagery of Heinz with the playful yet graceful style of Kate Spade, two iconic brands into one with their own identities.
This collection turned heads with its unique demo of how food branding has been integrated into luxurious fashion, with handbags in the shape of a ketchup bottle and red-and-white accessories inspired by the Heinz label. This collaboration between Kate Spade and Heinz really shows how food-splashed prints can make their way into the high-end market, blurring lines between quotidian objects and high-fashion pieces.
Chopova Lowena X Hellmann’s: Mayonnaise, Cool Again, Takes London Fashion Week By Storm
With the brilliant implications of this emerging trend, one of the most talked-about fashion collaborations is the unlikely Chopova Lowena x Hellmann alliance that is going to take center stage at London Fashion Week. The creative brand, playful and so innovative, has developed in cooperation with Hellmann’s a special ‘Margaret Bag’ to carry a jar of its famous mayonnaise, completed with a Victorian silver spoon and a vintage blue charm.
Dedicated to Margaret Hellmann, one of the founders of the brand who created the famous mayonnaise recipe in 1913, the bag pays tribute to her legacy and women in business. The Margaret bag is both stylish and practical, containing a comb, keys, and pen. The Dover Street Market, London, will eventually see the exclusive item this year, and that will point to an increasingly creative collaboration that the food industry is in with the fashion industry.
Collaboration Between Food And Fashion Is Nothing New
A few other food and fashion partnerships were leading the way for this phenomenon before these collaborations made headlines. The food-fashion landscape was shaped by five major collaborations, described below.
- McDonald’s x Travis Scott & BTS Merch: In 2020, McDonald’s had back-to-back collaborations with rapper Travis Scott and then K-pop sensation BTS to launch limited-edition merchandise items and special meal deals. From hoodies to bags, this merchandise movement swept into mainstream fashion within weeks by successfully fusing pop culture and fast food.
- Coca-Cola x Kith: Coca-Cola teamed up with Kith for some great apparel launches that incorporated iconic Coca-Cola branding into the urban fashion of Kith. This was one of those powerful mergers showing beverage branding meeting high fashion.
- Heinz x The Hundreds & Thredup: Heinz partnered with The Hundreds and Thredup for the creation of a line of upcycled apparel labeled Heinz and peeling into sustainability in a very new arena called fashion. This showed the aspect of sustainability by showing the influence that food brands have on eco-friendly fashion.
- Pizza Hut x Forever 21: Such a collaboration between Pizza Hut and Forever 21 gave birth to a quirky collection of pizza-inspired apparel and accessories. The partnership was successful in the eyes of their fans due to the humorous and nostalgic value of pizza culture.
- Cheetos x Forever 21: In collaboration with Forever 21, much like Pizza Hut, Cheetos launched their bright and cheerful apparel line with their iconic mascot Chester Cheetah. This apparel line delighted the millennial generation because of the fusion between snacking trends and urban fashion.
Why Food and Fashion Collaborations Work
What are the determining factors behind the success of such food and fashion brand couplings? It’s about matching shared brand values and driving a sense of newness and delight. When Lidl and Bentel turn a croissant into a handbag, Greggs is fusing sausage rolls with streetwear, and Heinx morphs a stained tee into a fashion statement, that type of coupling automatically forms powerful emotional connections with customers.
Most such partnerships also drive sustainability in the mode of partnering with rent-on-line platforms, upcycled fashion brands, or Limited Edition lines. Take Lidl’s collaboration, which moves into rotation, or take Heinz’s apparel range made from upcycled ketchup stains; just like them, it also meets the demands of sustainability and conscious consumption that are gaining popularity amongst consumers.
What This Means To Fashion Business Education
As one of the leading fashion schools, Istituto Marangoni Miami believes in innovation and cross-disciplinary interaction, which is fully captured in our fashion business course. These afferent partnerships between food and fashion companies serve as key examples for students of how creativity and strategic planning can elevate brand images and foster meaningful consumer contact. By this, our students learn about branding, marketing, and reaching out to mainstream culture. In an ever-changing market, the next generation of fashion professionals will be required to be agile-merging creativity with business skills to bring solutions to the table in new and innovative ways as the lines between industries continue to blur.
