Luxury logos are finally on the way out

I’m calling it. Logomania is over.

I first got a sense that the worm had turned on a trip to Bicester Village this summer, at the height of the UK heatwave. As I dragged myself down the mall’s main thoroughfare, I was overcome by a feeling of malaise. Not only was the weather soporific in the extreme, but every single person, old or young, tall or short, seemed to be wearing an item of clothing emblazoned with some kind of massive logo, and it made my soul feel knackered.

I know what you’re thinking: how can logos be over if everyone’s still wearing them? But trends are like spots. The moment they reach critical mass is also the moment they’re on a path to disappearing and, in the case of logos, losing all cachet. When you start seeing so many monograms and insignias around the fashion equivalent of Chieveley motorway services as you do strolling the pristine pavements of Old Bond Street, you know that critical mass has been reached.

I should establish early on that I really don’t like logos. My favourite brand is Bottega Veneta, the luxury leather goods house that made its strapline “when your own initials are enough”, and even though I can’t really afford to buy anything from the label, the sentiment chimes.

I think if you feel the need to wear a logo to establish your superiority, well, you’re probably not as culturally astute or superior as you think.

How did the luxury logo become so ubiquitous? It’s not a stretch to suggest that its recent rise ran in tandem with the ascent of Instagram. It’s also not a coincidence that just as the Meta-owned platform launched in 2010, showing off online became perfectly acceptable. In 2015, deified Gucci designer Alessandro Michele put the brand’s defunct yet totally IG-friendly GG belts back at the centre of his seasonal collections, and logomania was given the official high-fashion nod to run riot.

So, to low-key elegance we return, but what does that mean for your wardrobe?

The demise of this latest logo craze, therefore, has been a long time coming. But the true beginning of the end — its very own Danniella Westbrook in head-to-toe Burberry house-check moment — came, in my opinion, during the pandemic, when lockdown meant we had no reason to show off our clothes any more, and wearing anything more glamorous than a pair of black pique trousers from Lululemon felt a bit daft. When, eventually, we came crawling out of our Covid hovels, blinking and gurning into the sunlight, that sense of embarrassment stuck around.

It’s a change that chimes with the shift in our social media habits, too. Instagram’s growth in monthly users is forecast to dip to 5.8 per cent this year from 16.5 per cent in 2021, while TikTok, a platform on the rise, is far less geared towards showing off your finery in a two-dimensional way and more directed to being creative with your outfit choices.

What’s interesting is that all this change also falls in line with the over-proliferation of big-brand fashion collaborations. Where once said partnerships provided clever opportunities for small streetwear brands to team up symbiotically with luxury megaliths — and for each party to feed on the other’s respective credibility and heft — more recently massive logo-driven link-ups between the likes of Gucci and Balenciaga, and then Fendi and Versace, have pushed logomania into slightly manic new territory.

The shift is being reflected in our shopping habits. “We have seen a significant move away from logo-driven product towards brands opting for seasonal iterations of their logo and subtle, less graphic representations of their house codes,” says Damien Paul, head of menswear at London-based luxury retailer Matches Fashion.

The world’s biggest brands are keeping pace. Prada’s autumn/winter 2022 collection, for instance, was an ultra-slick celebration of razor-edged tailoring and proper shoes, as demonstrated with élan by Matt Smith at the recent House of the Dragon premiere. Sure, the collection featured a few Insta-friendly nods — a marabou-feather sleeve here and an oversized triangular-branded plaque there — but on the whole it was back to logo-free basics.

It was the same at Vetements — arguably the luxury brand that has held the oversized logo in the closest embrace in recent years — where creative director Guram Gvasalia toned down his penchant for logos dramatically. And then, of course, there’s everything that Bottega Veneta does.

So, to low-key elegance we return, but what does that mean for your wardrobe? In real terms it’s easy. Dig out all your old Jil Sander smock shirts and slim-cut Hedi Slimane for Dior suits and shove those voluminous branded tees to the back of your wardrobe until the logo trend comes around again. Because as sure as I’ll return to Bicester before the month is out, it’ll come around again.

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