From Scarcity to Screens: How Luxury Womenswear Brands in Europe Preserve Brand Codes in a Digital Environment

Context

The luxury fashion industry has historically relied on symbolic elements to communicate identity and trigger brand recall. These elements are identified as brand codes. Traditionally, these codes were discoverable in tangible mediums such as physical stores and garments. However, due to the rise of digital platforms, luxury communication has changed. Brands must balance visibility and exclusivity while remaining digitally relevant. In return, altering brand code communication. Given that brand codes are connected to brand identity and recall, their virtual translation becomes crucial in ensuring brands are correctly understood by the public. Furthermore, due to the accessible digital sphere, brand codes have become more available, thereby exposing them to risks such as reduced exclusivity, imitation, and misinterpretation.

The geographical scope of this research is restricted to Europe due to its significant number of luxury brands, many of which are key players within the luxury fashion market. Moreover, this investigation solely explores brands that have a women’s clothing line.

Objective

The aim of this thesis is to converge semiotics, luxury womenswear, and the digital sphere. Therefore, it explores how brand codes are communicated digitally, how luxury womenswear brands maintain exclusivity in the digital sphere, and how or whether the interpretation of digital brand codes is controlled or monitored by luxury brands. 

The overarching research question addressed in this paper is: 

“How do luxury women’s fashion brands in Europe communicate brand codes through digital platforms?”

In answering the aforementioned question, two subsequent research questions arise, namely:

a) How do luxury brands maintain exclusivity on these digital platforms

b) To what extent do luxury brands succeed in ensuring that their digital brand codes are correctly interpreted (in the intended way)?

Method

A multi-method qualitative approach was employed for this research. This includes qualitative interviews and a qualitative visual analysis of luxury brands’ content on Instagram. 

The qualitative interviews were conducted in a semi-structured format to allow for consistency and depth. In total six luxury professionals provided insight into topics such as brand codes, exclusivity, brand control strategies, and brand code perception. These interviews shed light on what brands believe they do online.               

Additionally, the qualitative visual analysis of brand content on Instagram enabled a direct investigation into what is visible online, highlighting how brands present themselves and their brand codes on digital platforms. This resulted in a dataset of sixty Instagram posts (excluding captions and stories) and six campaigns. To provide a deeper understanding of the online content, Peirce’s Sign Theory was employed.  

The findings were independently analysed through a deductive-inductive lens, adopting a Braun & Clarke reflexive thematic approach. Finally, both datasets were then triangulated against each other and the literature. 

Results

The findings indicate that brands communicate brand codes through a combination of implicit and explicit visual, narrative, design, and cultural codes, whereby these are often interconnected. Virtual manifestations of brand codes vary in formats such as covert in garment photography or overt in historical videography. Regardless of their format, these codes operate to reinforce brand identity and symbolic meaning. 

Visual codes are identified to be dominantly employed online through the use of subtle logos and colour palettes. Additionally, the results indicate that luxury firms create new brand codes designed for the digital environment. Narrative codes, i.e., heritage and forms of storytelling, are identified to be especially significant for consumer engagement, however they remain greatly implicit. Cultural codes such celebrity appearances and spatial distancing are utilised to cultivate a sense of prestige. 

While exclusivity mechanisms extend to codified content, additional restricted access strategies are deployed. This includes keeping certain consumer interactions offline or using limited stock. Finally, while limited novel interpretative control tactics were highlighted, brands indicate a significant use of engagement monitoring and consumer listening to ensure brand codes are correctly understood by consumers.