Brand collaborations & ‘the epidemic of sameness’

A defining trend of 2025? Brand collaborations.

The best are tactical: cross-pollinating audiences, sparking innovation, and injecting a short, sharp burst of energy into a brand that wants to diversify without committing to a full-scale refresh. The worst are inauthentic: confusing, undesirable, and lacking a clear strategy or purpose, formed simply by riding on the coattails of a cultural moment to feign relevancy.

Haley Crawford and Diana Pearl at @bof call it an ‘epidemic of sameness’. We call it collaboration fatigue. When every collaboration starts to look the same, the magic fades. Think Basquiat reduced to a phone case, or anything Barbie pink or Wicked green.

To spotlight those that still move the dial, here are some of our favourite collaborations from recent years.

- JW Anderson meets Wedgwood: honouring a shared devotion to craft traditions, reimagining historic ceramic forms with Anderson’s worldbuilding.

- John Smedley meets Bill Nighy: celebrating five decades of shared style and serendipity, down to the embroidered bird lifted from Bill’s personal sketches and reimagined as a maker's mark.

Bill Nighy for John Smedley

- ERDEM meets Barbour: bringing energy to legacy, rethinking the iconic waxed jacket through Erdem Moralıoğlu’s distinctive design lens.

- Chanel meets Charvet: Blazy’s debut saw the historic French shirtmaker contribute to the fabric and technique of three special designs, returning the house to tradition without compromising modernity.

Details from Charvet for Chanel

- Drakes meets St. John: as GQ put it, “one of London's favourite IYKYK restaurants teaming up with a menswear brand that's equally IYKYK.”

- HAY meets ASICS: based on a mutual commitment to creating functional products, reinventing an archival ASICS silhouette in HAY’s signature palette.

The playful world of HAY X ASICS

The key learning? Collaboration should amplify, not dilute. Use with caution, and execute with care.