Fashion Brands Gear Up for the Las Vegas Grand Prix
Formula 1 is making its highly anticipated return to Las Vegas on Thursday more than 40 years since the city’s last Grand Prix, and many fashion brands are getting in on the action.
Fashion brands and designers like Puma, Tumi, Psycho Bunny, Pacsun and Boss, among many others, are taking part in the Las Vegas Grand Prix with a host of events, pop-ups and meet-and-greets with F1 racers this weekend to engage with the ever-growing fanbase around the sport.
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“We like to be a brand that’s pushing boundaries and part of firsts and new experiences,” said Nadia Kokni, senior vice president of global marketing at Hugo Boss. “All the energy and the excitement is focused around Vegas. We think that this is really going to be the race of the season. To be part of an amazing race, a part of this huge and amazing sport that’s growing and to reach all of these people from a brand new place where there’s excitement and the energy of Vegas — it still captures people’s minds, but captures people’s imaginations to be out there in Vegas where you can win and you could lose. Everything is so much more amplified. We really wanted to leverage that opportunity for storytelling and for hosting and hospitality.”
Boss is among many fashion brands that are leveraging partnerships within Formula 1 for the Las Vegas Grand Prix. The fashion brand is partnered with the Aston Martin Formula 1 team to host activations, including VIP viewings of the qualifying sessions and finale race, in-store displays of F1 gear and dressing its ambassador, racer Fernando Alonso, for his many events throughout the weekend.
Tumi, which is the official luggage partner for the McLaren F1 team, is hosting similar activations, such as a meet-and-greet with its ambassador, racer Lando Norris, at its store at the Forum Shops.
Both Boss and Tumi, as well as other labels like Tommy Hilfiger and Puma, see their participation in the Las Vegas Grand Prix as a natural fit for the brands as they each have a long history in Formula 1 with their respective partnership and heritage in motorsports.
“Sometimes you see a lot of brands show up,” said Tumi’s senior vice president of global marketing and e-commerce, Jill Krizelman. “You’re seeing a lot of new brands coming to the table, but I think for Tumi, we really have an authority and a reason to show up at an event like this given our partnership with McLaren and our partnership with Lando [Norris].”
Puma, which announced its multifaceted partnership with Formula 1 in May at the Miami Grand Prix, is using the Las Vegas race to introduce its latest initiative under the partnership: debuting its first Formula 1 collection designed by creative director A$AP Rocky. The collection will be introduced at a pop-up in downtown Las Vegas on Friday and Saturday.
“Motorsport has been one of our most important categories for the Puma history,” said Puma chief product officer Maria Valdes. “It was important for us to really evaluate how we can further expand our opportunities of motorsport in culture — and actually besides being a very performance-driven category, also explore the non-performance side of it. Today, we see that it’s a really hot sport and that has allowed us to push our ideas further. Bringing someone with the level of creativity, vision and connection to culture was a natural match.”
Puma’s A$AP Rocky collaboration is just one of many initiatives the brand has planned for the Las Vegas Grand Prix. The brand is also releasing collections designed by Joshua Vides for Scuderia Ferrari.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix also sees fashion brands newly entering the sport, such as Psycho Bunny, which recently named Formula 1 presenter Will Buxton as a brand ambassador.
“Sport style is where we want the brand to live,” said Bertrand Cesvet, executive creative director of Psycho Bunny. “We want to be endemic to the community. It’s one thing to come into a community and spend money, but we have to do it earnestly and authentically. In Will [Buxton], we found someone really interesting. He has a very interesting role in the F1 community and for us, what’s important is participation in the F1 community.”
Pacsun, which introduced its Formula 1 collections last year, is releasing its latest to celebrate the Las Vegas Grand Prix, offering unisex pieces that leverage many of the racing motifs found in F1.
“The cultural impact of the sport and how it started to gain significance and relevance here in the U.S — I’d say that was one of the big things that captured our attention,” said Richard Cox, vice president of men’s and global partnerships at Pacsun. “Our goal all of the time is to be aware of where our customers are at. We were starting to notice that the sport was becoming more important to them and they were engaging with it more. We felt like based on our brand positioning and what our goals are in terms of engaging with them, that we had to figure out a way to participate, especially when it relates to our big cultural pillars: fashion, music, art and sports.”
Given Formula 1’s rapidly increasing fan base — according to ESPN, the 2022 season was the sport’s most watched, with viewership increasing 28 percent year-over-year to an average of 1.2 million viewers per race — it’s natural that more brands want to get involved.
Psycho Bunny, for instance, is utilizing its partnership with Buxton to embark on its global expansion. The men’s fashion label, which relaunched in 2017, has plans to expand into Europe soon, and sees its presence in Formula 1 as a way to boost its international appeal.
“Formula 1 has a global appeal,” Cesvet said. “What needs to happen is a person, a potential fan of the brand, needs to discover the product on a great guy who’s doing something great in a great environment. We feel that F1 is really great because of its global reach. In terms of the demographics also of Formula 1, it opens the door to premium customers and more international customers.”
For brands that have a history in motorsports, such as Boss and Puma, it’s exciting for them to see the increase in interest so that they can further tell their brands’ stories through Formula 1 partnerships.
“Formula 1 is growing at a phenomenal pace,” Kokni said. “It’s still got so much more growth and it’s so rapid. The appeal is global. We can see that there are male and female [viewers] and a younger audience and an older audience. It’s got something really reenergized about it and for us, that gives us the opportunity to tell our stories at depth and get close to our consumers and our audience.”
With the growth in interest among fans, brands are seeing more and more new opportunities pop up within Formula 1, making it an industry that they think is worth investing in.
“F1 has become much more than the race and that allows different fields in different areas of the business for you to tap into,” Valdes said. “Today, we see that we have a whole world beyond the race and the products. Even when you see the pit, it’s almost like a fashion catwalk. You see an opportunity for not only sports brands, but also fashion brands and maybe even other industries that will want to see F1 or motorsport as an opportunity to tap a new sports category.”
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