Meet Fred Stauffer Digital Wunderkind of luxury fashion
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People |Interview
Via Zoom from LA, where he is working on a top secret project in the entertainment industry, Frederico Stauffer the digital filmmaker who has captivated brands like Prada, Hermès, and Louis Vuitton tells FashionUnited how he came to have the luxury industry in the palm of his hand. He’s careful about saying he’s branching out because he doesn’t feel he ever geared his creativity towards one sector. But there’s no doubt the luxury fashion houses embraced him.
“My fashion work is what stands out the most, but one of my strengths is that I’m flexible and can adapt to any situation or product,” says Stauffer who was born in Brazil, raised in France. “I’ve worked with a French chef recently for chocolate which was fun and different. Going out of your routine helps creativity.”
Everything for Stauffer started on Instagram. He was making videos for fun, and wanted to experiment with the just-launched Reels. “I started making these loop content videos, short form that would go from 3 to 10 seconds on a nonstop loop.” He doesn’t care for the title “influencer” because he never considered himself one, preferring the label “creator.” His first high-profile video was for the Louvre involving the painting of Mona Lisa and some playful jiggery-pokery. Brands took notice. This was April 2021.
“The first brand I worked with was Balmain,” says Stauffer. “Not to create content for them because all that was still very new. They just asked me to make videos of their fashion show.” But Miu Miu followed, presenting him with his first creative project which also happened to be a first for the brand, he says, as Miu Miu had always created everything in-house. “I had to come up with about 10 concepts for videos to run alongside their campaigns. It was the first time I was doing what I do now, where I receive the brief for the campaign and have to do something similar but with my little twist.”
Around this time, Stauffer says brands were still eyeing their competitors for what they were doing in the digital sphere but slowly realizing that they needed a presence on TikTok, and Instagram Reels. They were looking for someone like him but didn’t know it. He proved to be the solution to at least one of the pandemic's many problems: how to cultivate consumer engagement in a world without physical interactions. “No one was really doing this in Europe last year,” says Stauffer. “And I’m still really the only one doing it. So it was easy for brands to call me.”
Fred Stauffer's signature style lights up luxury fashion
Stauffer’s signature is what he refers to as “a special magical twist that will make people stay and watch and discover more. It creates some sort of intrigue, a surprise. I like to create an element of surprise.” His ability to adapt his brand of magic to suit the aesthetic of each house is why he thinks luxury brands gravitated towards him.
So much has changed in just a year but brands still have a way to go and Stauffer offers them a word of caution: “Customers of tomorrow consume ads through their phone today. They don’t have as much time as they had before to sit on their couch watching TV. Today people are scrolling, scrolling, there’s just so much going on. It is very important to be present in this digital culture, because you may still be relevant today but tomorrow you might fade.”
While success landed in his lap, entirely unplanned, the result of the perfect alignment of global events and his personal passion project, he says it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. In the early days he would arrive on time but be sitting around on set for hours while the team carried on producing traditional content. “I was being called by these brands but they didn’t know what to do with me,” he says. “With production, organizing, adapting their normal schedule that they’ve been following for years, wondering how can we squeeze in this guy who has just come to make some more videos?” He considers it a joint learning curve between himself and the brands.
Brands still need to rethink their digital strategy
'They were prioritizing what they considered the more important content, print and TV commercials, but the content that ended up having the most views and engagement and which helped them sell the most is the content I create.” He felt that he was teaching them about the power and importance of short form digital content. Now when he arrives he is no longer forced to create in a corner out of everyone’s way but finds a full set ready for him.
His favorite brand was one of the first to hire him, Prada. In terms of career highlights, he says it’s the trust that luxury houses have placed in him and his creativity that he values above all. “That they come to me, and say ,we love what you do, do something for us, and just to be heard, it’s incredible,” he says. “I’m passionate about what I do, I’m doing something I love every day." If he had to identify a new collaboration that would excite him, it would be working with Google.
To be ready for the digital future Stauffer believes brands should devote their resources to understanding what makes the best content. “I think photos are still going to be there, and campaigns, but the importance of digital campaigns is just going to grow,” he says. “They will be less of a secondary production and more of a highlight. So brands will have to create a day for the digital content and another day for the rest of the campaign.”
Otherwise he doesn’t like to think too much about the future but prefers simply to remain excited and to adapt to whatever presents itself. “I like to see the wave coming and just go and catch it,” says Stauffer. “That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m just surfing this big wave that I’ve no idea where it came from but I’m enjoying it."