Days after Colm Dillane presented the Louis Vuitton’s Autumn/Winter 2023 menswear collection he guest designed for the brand, the founder of Brooklyn-based streetwear label KidSuper brought the fashion world back together — and made fun of it.

On Feb. 13, 2023, the designer recruited model Tyra Banks, musician J Balvin and comedians Jeff Ross, Yvonne Orji, Stavros Halkias and Andrew Schulz to put on a stand-up show, which doubled as KidSuper’s Autumn/Winter 2023 show, “Funny Business” at the Casino de Paris. There, in front of an audience of around 1,500, the entertainers — dressed in the latest KidSuper collection — lampooned Balenciaga, fashion week, and made jokes about women, weight, diversity and Parisians. Schulz’s closing set started with a bit that mixed discussion of Alexander Wang’s sexual assault accusations and description of Dillane’s manhood. Nearly everyone commented on how silly they looked in the clothes, which included colourful suits, jackets, tracksuits and puffers detailed with Dillane’s prints, patchwork and embroidery.

After it was over, Dillane’s first thought was ‘how do I do it again?’

“There was this amazing fish out of water moment that everyone was a kid for a little bit. The fashion world didn’t understand the comedy world, the comedy world didn’t understand the fashion world and everyone lost their mask or armour,” recalled Dillane. “I couldn’t believe I created this world where Theo Von, Tyra Banks and J Balvin are riffing jokes.”

It turns out, he didn’t have to wait too long. On Sunday, Dillane took to the stage again, curating a “Funny Business: Fashion is a Joke” set for the “Netflix is a Joke Festival,” a week-long comedy event the streamer stages annually in Los Angeles. Comedians Joel Kim Booster, Trevor Wallace, Zainab Johnson, Mark Normand and Mark Gagnon took to the stage, naturally, wearing KidSuper head-to-toe.

The event didn’t draw nearly as large a crowd, but Dillane is hoping to make KidSuper comedy shows a yearly occurrence — and leverage the moment into fulfilling bigger Hollywood ambitions including a TV series based around the KidSuper brand and his story, which he’s currently pitching to studios.

Since his entry into fashion over a decade ago, Dillane has emerged as one of the industry’s buzziest young talents. While his design skills have earned him a joint-win of LVMH’s Karl Lagerfeld Prize in 2021 and a nomination for CFDA menswear designer of the year in 2023, his world-building prowess has propelled Dillane from selling shirts out of his NYU dorm to Louis Vuitton and beyond. In particular, it helped him to establish the KidSuper brand, which retails at Neiman Marcus, Ssense and Luisaviaroma — and has collaborated with Canada Goose, the NBA, Coca-Cola and Puma.

“Building your brand and your story is super important. If you have a great foundation you can scale it,” said Dillane.

Multi-Hyphenate Brand-Building

Dillane’s work has always been about more than just fashion.

The late rapper Mac Miller was one of his earliest fans, while the musician Russ recorded songs for his first platinum album “There’s Really a Wolf” in a makeshift recording studio Dillane set up in the basement of his first design space in Brooklyn.

In the years since, he’s continued to engage with music (Dillane just directed a yet-to-be released music video for rappers Quavo and Giggs, based on a song made for the soundtrack of his last show), soccer (Dillane is a hardcore fan whose love of the sport brought about an ongoing partnership with Puma) and art (he just did a show of paintings at Frieze), which makes it feel authentic when he brings his brand into those different venues.

“It’s not like, ‘I’m a fashion designer and I’m dipping into this other area,’ he is in those areas,” said Julie Gilhart, president of Tomorrow Projects.

Having built a following in New York, his star began to rise after his first presentation on the official Paris Fashion Week calendar in August 2020. Unable to showcase his designs in person due to the pandemic, he presented them in a stop-motion short film that featured tiny versions of his clothes on Pelé, Salvador Dali, Elon Musk, Naomi Campbell and Stephen Hawking dolls — and a fake Anna Wintour, Queen Elizabeth and Kim Kardashian in the audience. For his next collection, he made a pilot episode for a would-be TV show “The MisAdventures of KidSuper,” and was later signed by talent agency William Morris Entertainment.

Since then, he’s continued to push the envelope when it comes to presentation, with a runway at a mock auction — which he dubbed “Superbys” — of his own paintings in 2022. He starred in a self-written and directed play about creativity called “How to Find an Idea” for his Spring/Summer 2024 show in August. His latest runway, titled “String Theory,” featured Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho and a dramatic finale where a sweater unravelled as the model walked down the runway.

Getting tapped to design for Louis Vuitton in 2023 launched Dillane into a different stratosphere of attention, and the interest extends off the runway, too. In September, after Travis Kelce wore his “Bedroom Painting” denim set at the peak of Taylor Swift dating intrigue, Dillane renamed it the “1989 Bedroom Painting” set — which made it go viral.

“He’s just a bundle of ideas and creativity,” said Gilhart. “He’s different in terms of how he approaches fashion and the fashion system.”

The connection to comedy came naturally. Known for its bright coloured clothes featuring arty sketched characters derived from Dillane’s painting — his signature purse features a drawing of two faces kissing — KidSuper’s brand is centred around levity and creativity from the designs to Dillane’s methods in showing them. Dillane put on a few local shows in New York in 2018. Plus, he considers himself “a stand-up comedian in his head.”

Building his brand in adjacent spaces is a business move as well. Independent designers often have to find ways to make money outside fashion to survive now — and they increasingly have to build their own personas to get opportunities, said Dillane.

“[Collaborators] are like ‘What do you represent that can help the brand grow? It’s a tough time,” said Dillane.

KidSuper is self-funded (save his $150,000 LVMH Prize co-winnings), and Dillane is reluctant to give up equity. Instead he relies on collaborations — KidSuper has worked with Puma since 2020, Canada Goose on a capsule in 2024, Meta, The NBA, Stuart Weitzman and even bean bag and couch-maker Lovesac, toy company Superplastic and Starbucks in 2023 — to keep the bottom line growing while still being able to take creative risks.

He’s currently building out the brand’s ambitious headquarters, a 10,000 square foot complex in Williamsburg, “KidSuper World.” The storefront opened during New York Fashion Week in March, sells KidSuper goods with a supermarket-style check out, a library and laundromat-inspired shelving, an art gallery, a screenprinting studio, a Jagermeister-themed private bar and an ultra-detailed campsite-themed studio where comedian Mark Gagnon films his “Camp Gagnon” podcast. Still to come is a food truck and public outdoor space, recording studio and a soccer field on the roof, said Dillane.

Put altogether, it’s meant to build the dream — and sell the clothes.

“I’m biased, but if I was a consumer, I would be like ‘KidSuper is the best brand ever,’” said Dillane. “What other brand is doing a comedy show? Let alone the 10 other cool things I’m doing.”

When Milk Makeup launched its Cooling Water Jelly Tint in February, with the tagline: “Colour so juicy, it’s almost good enough to eat,” the team expected it to create buzz online, said Dianna Ruth, Milk Makeup’s co-founder and head of product development.

They did not, however, anticipate that the lip and cheek stain, which features a jelly-like texture and cooling sensation when applied, to go as viral as it did on TikTok, with some creators taking that tagline to heart, by taking a literal bite out of the product.

“Can you blame me though? It looks like grape jelly and kool aid,” creator Hannah Cho said on TikTok. Videos about the product, which sold out twice on Sephora within two weeks and currently has a waitlist of over 45,000 shoppers, have racked up millions of views on the platform — Cho’s alone has 3 million.

Milk’s is just the latest brand to use food — especially sweet treats — to sell cosmetics. In 2023, several of the major beauty trends that emerged from TikTok were named after food. There was strawberry girl makeup (heavily pink eyes and cheeks); glazed doughnut nails (sheer with a lot of shimmer) and cinnamon cookie butter hair (brown with caramel and copper undertones), just to name a few.

The association between beauty and food can be traced all the way back to Ancient Egypt, when Cleopatra popularised kohl eyeliner, which counts burnt almonds as an ingredient. More recently, Lip Smackers’ fruit-flavoured lip glosses and balms were a staple for Millennial consumers in the aughts.

The trend’s most recent iteration is fuelled by increased engagement with food and beverage content on platforms like TikTok. TikTok’s foodie community is as much a driver of fleeting trends as is beauty and fashion. (Baked feta pasta and ‘sleepy girl’ mocktails are examples of food trends that have gained virality on the app.) #FoodTikTok has amassed over 112 billion views. In response, beauty brands are launching products that resemble food — usually desserts — or are marketing their assortment alongside actual candy, like gummy bears and gum drops. To drive further conversation among Gen-Z shoppers, labels are partnering with food companies, like Rhode Skin’s team-up with Krispy Kreme and Too Faced’s collaboration with Pop-Tarts.

It’s not a fool-proof strategy: Beauty Bakerie, which structured their entire catalogue around products that looked like baked goods, including its Face Flour Baking Powder and Matte Lip Whips lipsticks, shuttered in April. The trick is to capitalise on food-centric trends without banking on them entirely.

“When ‘glazed doughnut’ was at its height, sales of highlighters ticked up as did dewy serums,” said Larissa Jensen, senior vice president and global beauty industry advisor at Circana. “It’s definitely working.”

Hopping on the Trend

TikTok, with its precise algorithm churning content at high speeds, has birthed beauty trends with very little staying power. In the span of six months, the platform had introduced the strawberry girl trend, characterised by a heavily blushed and freckled face, latte makeup which sports brown lip liner and heavy use of bronzer, as well as blueberry milk nail trend, characterised by a pale blue nail colour.

What these food-centric beauty trends, like latte makeup and blueberry milk nails, have in common is that they are more a reinvigoration and rebranding of makeup techniques that already exist, according to TikTok creator Mandy Lee, known online as “Old Loser In Brooklyn,” who breaks down trends on her account.

“A singular line of sameness can constitute a trend on TikTok,” she said. “Trends used to have subcultures attached to them and were rooted in a shared history.”

But tapping into the cultural moment — even if it’s fleeting — can generate buzz and sales, especially from Gen-Z and Gen Alpha shoppers for whom social media serves as their primary source of information when making makeup purchasing decisions, according to data from Circana.

What that means, however, is that the lift for brands to participate in these trends is much lighter — they only have to update the marketing of their existing catalogue to respond to the moment.

For lip care brand Lanolips, tapping into the glazed doughnut trend was as simple as introducing a glazed doughnut flavour of their 101 Ointment Multi-Balm, one of their hero products. The product quickly became a top SKU for the label, selling out in a month on its website.

“Food and beauty both have this sensorial experience, it’s almost like an indulgence in a way skincare isn’t,” said Kirsten Carriol, founder and chief executive of Lanolips. “The ointment is meant to hydrate the lips but that can get boring. Adding flavours has been a game changer for us and the flavoured ointment range now makes up 30 percent of our business.”

Even if a brand can’t update a current product, it can still highlight how their existing offering can be used to tap into a trend. For example, in 2023, sales for lip balm, a staple of the ‘glazed doughnut’ look, reached $285 million, an 85 percent jump from the previous year, according to data from Circana. And sales for blush, a must-have for consumers wanting to play around with the strawberry girl or tomato girl trends, peaked at $426 million, an increase of 60 percent year-over-year.

The Right Mix of Collaborators

For beauty brands who want to make a bigger bet on the food trend, product collaborations have proved to be an effective tool.

Hailey Bieber’s Rhode Skin, for instance, partnered with Krispy Kreme to create a strawberry flavoured version of the label’s best-selling peptide lip treatment. The collaboration increased engagement in Rhode’s social channels by 715 percent, according to Trendalytics. Since then, Rhode has doubled down on food associations, launching tinted versions of the lip peptide treatment in shades like espresso, jelly bean and toast, with marketing to match.

For E.l.f Beauty, collaborations with food companies are a way for the business to access a new customer base that may not have necessarily heard of the brand, or encourage existing customers to engage with products they are familiar with in a new way, said Kory Marchisotto, E.l.f Beauty’s chief marketing officer.

In 2021, E.l.f. teamed up with fast-casual Mexican-inspired restaurant Chipotle on a makeup palette that resembled the restaurant’s assembly line of beans, rice and guacamole, and in April, it partnered with canned water brand Liquid Death on a collection of heavy metal-inspired makeup, including a black lipstick and heavy eyeliner.

“For any collaboration we do, we need to check the box that the brand is a challenger in its category, and the second box is humour,” said Marchisotto. “When I think about E.l.f and what our community is, they give us permission to be fun and funny.”

The fun factor is core to beauty’s embrace of food. Beyond driving sales, it’s a way for beauty brands to give their customers something lighthearted to talk about.

“In the 2010s, makeup became really serious. You had to contour and bake and add false lashes,” said Arionne Nettles, a Chicago, Illinois-based educator. “This trend feels like a return to a time when makeup felt fun and less intimidating.”

After the US Federal Trade Commission moved to block Tapestry’s acquisition of Capri, Tapestry chief executive Joanne Crevoiserat went on an impromptu media tour. In one representative quote, she told The New York Times “it’s quite clear to us that they don’t understand how consumers shop today and they don’t understand the dynamics of a marketplace with no barriers to entry, constant influx of new competitors.” Many within the fashion industry, as well as some outside observers, agree (a popular theory is that FTC chair Lina Khan knows she’s unlikely to succeed in blocking deals like this, but the lawsuit threat alone will cause others to think twice before pursuing mega mergers).

Of course, Tapestry has a legal obligation to defend the deal in court as part of its merger agreement with Capri, and will no doubt do so again when executives speak to analysts on Thursday after releasing quarterly results. But, as Bernstein analyst Aneesha Sherman pointed out in a recent note, there’s plenty of wiggle room for Tapestry to walk away if it decides Michael Kors isn’t worth picking a fight with the US government. Language requiring “reasonable best efforts” to defend the deal isn’t as strict as other mergers. And either party can walk away if the deal’s closing is delayed past February 2025; with the FTC’s first hearing scheduled for September, that’s entirely possible.

There’s no reason to believe Tapestry actually wants to walk away; the company is riding high on its successful turnaround at Coach, and believes it can work the same magic at Capri’s struggling brands. But how the deal is discussed on the earnings call Thursday will be very carefully parsed.

Meanwhile, on the Upper East Side

This year’s Met Gala is feeling a little… cursed is too strong a word, but perhaps unlucky? Vogue and the Costume Institute couldn’t have predicted when they chose TikTok as lead sponsor in February that legislation to ban the app would suddenly pick up momentum again. The event is also a shiny target for unionised Condé Nast employees, who are at an impasse with the company over their first contract. And it’s a rare high-profile event these days that doesn’t draw pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The odds any of this intrudes on the event itself remain low; picketers can be cordoned off, and brands have seen no blowback from working with TikTok since the clock started ticking on a potential ban.

The union is more of a wild card. Union organisers say they’re “ready to strike,” but haven’t specified any action around the Met Gala specifically. A work stoppage on Monday would effectively force attendees to pick a side just by walking up the steps. Anne Hathaway memorably walked off a Vanity Fair photo shoot in January in solidarity with the Condé Nast union’s work stoppage, and celebrities canceled appearances and spoke out in support of the writer’s strike last year.

It wouldn’t be the first time real world events intrude on the Met Gala bubble (including two years ago when the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade leaked just as Kim Kardashian was arriving on the red carpet). Still, the star power almost always overshadows everything else. This year will put that to the test.

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