JKR

4. Retro is just a branch line of the bigger “authenticity” trend.

In troubled times we all like to be comforted. Be that from brands offering a taste of “the good old days” or brands which tap into a more simple and human feel (authentic design-see our thought piece on this to read more). Retro is just one way of doing this, and some brands take the spirit of retro without actually bringing back an old product or design. For example, Coke trades on its “peace and love” visual heritage with hippy looking editions and advertising, which also pulls off the trick of feeling visually “now”.

5. Retro can build on fantastic design legacies.

The Fiat 500 redesign is just the latest in a long line of “iconic” cars re-presented in a contemporary manner that also trade on the original’s emotional pulling power.

While such designs often fail to build on the innovative spirit of the original’s engineering, they do show how the nuts and bolts can be reconfigured to offer an enticing contemporary twist. Similarly, Gucci by Gucci, whilst being a new fragrance, is evoking the design heritage and decadence of the brand in its seventies pomp. As the New York Times described the scent: “Gucci by Gucci winks at the memory of Sophia Loren’s breasts busting out of a black silk dress in 1964, and presents it 2007-style. The perfume opens like a Vegas show, all the glorious, rich, crass materialism you could want.” It further explains: “When Gucci decided to create its latest fragrance, the house’s artistic director, Frida Giannini, set herself quite a task: to create the perfume equivalent of a Niketown flagship, huge and impressive and filled to the brim with everything a fan could possibly dream of asking from a brand. It would distill the essence of Gucci — the label’s unrestrained luxury, its blatant carnality, so free of French hauteur, so Italian in its joyful, slightly bad-taste abandon.” The perfume has been launched at the same time as a (identically named) coffee table book which celebrates the brands rich visual history, and the advertising featured a Jerry hall look-a-like dancing to Blondie. It’s a neat example of new product innovation being used to crystalise and project the brand’s historical and cultural roots.

Also drawing on the past but feeling very much in the present, Agent Provocateur (the UK’s eighth coolest brand according to “Superbrands”), makes great use of old fashioned ‘50’s style glamour and gift-wrapping, evoking a contemporary “edgy” sensibility (after all, can anything be more retro than a corset?). The knickers are gift-wrapped in tissue and presented in a chocolate box style pack which celebrates, perhaps, a more courtly age.

Might Wispa have benefited from a more nuanced re-presentation which traded on its old values but brought them up to date? Certainly there is nothing particularly “classic” in the brand’s original design (which was, in fact, only discontinued in 2003). Could Gillette re-issue a classic razor whose simplicity contrasts with the “all singing all dancing new self-lubricating seven blade wonder innovation”? Could Kit-Kat bring back the 2-bar stick for “impulse buys” in the more iconic paper and foil packaging of its recent past?

Final thought.

The chances are that the retro “trend” might be nothing more than a blip. Like the short-lived fashion for alcoholic lemonade brands (remember them?) it might be an attractive proposition to those looking for an easy answer. And if such projects improve the bottom line without much effort they clearly make sense to pursue. But in the end, the real wins will come from a more imaginative embracing of the future, plundering the back catalogue as a springboard for new and interesting evolutions of the original (in the manner of Nike and Adidas). This latter approach potentially has more innovative scope, and also offers projects with a little more creative merit at their heart.

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