Sisley aims for re-invention

Italian brand Sisley is on a journey to re-invent itself, and its new spring 2014 fashion campaign hopes to distance itself from its fast fashion roots to somewhere more luxurious. The company, which is owned by the Benetton Group, has enlisted Lindsey Wixson Julia Restoin Roitfeld,

Clément Chabernaud and Rueben Ramacher - hoping these well-known faces will appeal to a younger audience who may be interested in the glamorous lifestyle of celebrities followed by a stream of cameras.

It takes

more than supermodels to reposition a brand

Of course repositioning a brand requires much more than a cunning celebrity ad campaign, and really is about executing an entire spring cleaning of its brand. For this to be successful Sisley would need to see its website refreshed, its store interiors refreshed, its communication refreshed, its creative direction refreshed, but most of all its clothes refreshed.

And that's where perhaps the problem lies with Sisley. Once, along with Benetton, they were the untouchable powerhouse of the global high street. But these days that torch belongs to Zara and Uniqlo and Abercrombie and J Crew, who seem to intrinsincally understand both the fashion, the merchandising and the product end with more depth and consideration.

Zara doesn't advertise, instead it famously channels all its budget into its own stores, catalogues, product and in-house communication.

Perhaps Sisley could take notice, rather than inflecting outward, they should start looking inward. It takes a lot more than a few supermodels to elevate a brand out of the obscurity of fashion irrelevance.

Image: Sisley SS14