how Virgil Abloh’s tourist vs purist helps us to understand fashion consumers

Love him or hate him, Virgil Abloh was one of the most influential creatives in fashion, design and culture of the last 10 years. He redefined the intersection of luxury and streetwear with his own label Off-White, and then took over creative direction for menswear at Louis Vuitton, the largest and most known luxury brand in the world. Aside from this, Abloh was a multi-faceted creative and worked on countless interdisciplinary collaborations ranging from IKEA rugs to designing Drake’s private jet.


Many know his 3% approach to design. „Create something new by only changing a process, a product, a perspective, etc. by 3 percent. The result is advanced, yet still acceptable, satisfying our natural interest in novelty and change while maintaining familiarity”1. However, to me, his Louis Vuitton Fall-Winter 21 collection is among the most significant of his creations. This is not because of the show or the pieces itself but simply because of one key discourse that is introduced through the collection: the idea of Tourist vs Purist.


In the extensive shownotes the two terms are introduced first as a categorization: “A reflection of society’s manmade reflex to label humanity according to a collective perception through which belonging to one group supposedly excludes us from joining another” 2. In a Numero Article, he goes deeper into explaining the differences. “The tourist […], is an un-jaded enthusiast, wide-eyed about new discoveries and eager to learn more. The purist, on the other hand, is an expert who knows the history of the given subject or tradition and has developed criteria to form judgments or seek out the most rare and essential examples.”3


But why is all this relevant in the first place?

Abloh originally uses the terms to describe himself and his creative process, however, I believe we can use this binary to describe fashion consumers.

In the past consumer descriptions and analysis has often relied on demographic attributes – age, origin, gender, area of living for example. However, modern marketing theory suggests that these might not be sufficiently accurate to precisely describe what motivates them. Behavioural descriptions tend to be much handier to predict actual consumer decisions. Ultimately, attitudes, values and interests are more significant in determining if one will be interested in a product, brand, or service than mere descriptive information.


The Tourist vs Purist definition does exactly that. It creates a distinction between two key categories based on attitudes and behaviours. Tourists are characterised by high curiosity, but on the flipside also by being generally uneducated on a specific matter. Purists hold deep knowledge but might end up being narrow-minded and opinionated. These characteristics affect how they process information and ultimately their choices. Marketers are well consulted to take a behavioural definition into consideration, and I believe that the Tourist vs Purist categorization offers a comprehensive view on customers, if it is tweaked just a little bit.

amending the definition

I love the Tourist vs Purist categorization because it is easy to comprehend and focuses on positive character traits. Nevertheless, since Abloh uses it mostly to describe himself and his creative process, it might not be as complete as it needs to be to carry value for marketers in the fashion industry. In order to enhance it for this purpose, I believe there are two important dimensions of the fashion industry that should be introduced, to expand the simple Tourist/Purist binary.

 

The first dimension is Fashion in general. This refers to the macro- and micro-trends, as well as the sources of inspiration from art, culture, and socio-political context that inform current styles of clothing. A Fashion Purist or Tourist is somebody who knows about trends or does not, carries an opinion on them or does not and knows its sources of inspiration or does not. It describes the knowledge, awareness, and reaction to fashion and the universe around it.

 

Second, and dislocated from trends and fashion (as much as that is possible), is the Brand Purist or Tourist. They know everything about a brand or do not, they care about the lore, myths, values, and codes or do not and they undertake great scrutiny on how the brand changes over time or do not.

 

Creating the independence between “fashion” and “brand” allows us to distribute the two in a 2×2 matrix and define four key archetypes of fashion consumers that are either fashion Tourists or Purists and brand Tourists or Purists.

discovering the archetypes

Let’s deep dive the four and begin with the double Tourists and double Purists.

 

Double Tourists are Reporters. They are everywhere, eyes and ears always eager on finding the next big thing. However, they are unspecialised without deep knowledge on any of the topics they discover. While this makes them the most curious and easily interested in newness, it also makes them the most volatile of all our archetypes. They do not really know what they like or hate, they sway between different trends and brands, and are always searching for something that satisfies the needs of the moment.

 

On the contrary, double Purists are Archivists. For them the moment is not that important. They are dedicated to longevity and keeping records in order. They build nuanced knowledge to always understand the commentary of their favourite brand on the Zeitgeist. They know this brand in and out, most likely better than many of its actual employees. They also know a lot about the current fashion landscape yet always put a very high scrutiny over everything that happens. At the same time, they are quite slow in adoption of these new trends and narrowly follow the path that they’ve chosen. The archivists are overall the dimension that holds the highest demands on fashion as an art form and on the brands that they follow closely.

 

More torn and less clear-cut are the hybrid consumer archetypes, the Tourist-Purist combinations.

The Librarian is a fashion Purist yet brand Tourist. They are highly knowledgeable on the plethora of inspirations in today’s fashion landscape, and they know all the trends. At the same time, they do not particularly prefer any of the brands in the market, as none fully satisfy their needs for individuality. Librarians pick pieces from different brands to build their own look. While being quite arrogant in terms of judging the different brands execution of the current landscape, they are as curious as the reporter to discover new ones that might fit in with their personal interpretation of fashion at the very moment.

 

Finally, the Author is a fashion Tourist yet brand Purist. An author chooses a topic and works on it over a lengthened period, and while doing so they build strong domain knowledge but spend much less time on diving deep outside of it. Even though they like to look at what else is on the market, they ultimately do not really care to understand the trends outside of their chosen domain. The author is highly invested in one brand and sticks to it. They might best be characterized by telling you: “I like how this looks, but I don’t like it on me”. They know what they want for themselves, and the rest is for the rest.

implication for marketers

Defining these Personas helps us to create a distinction between the different consumer groups. Beyond simple categorization it is even more important to use the archetypes to understand their implications on the bottom line of a profit & loss statement. Here, each of the four share some key characteristics.

 

Fashion Tourists – Reporters and Authors – are generally easy to motivate to try a specific type of fashion in the first place, before they are either locked in (Authors) or switching again (Reporters). In general, they are frolicking between all the different visual inspirations they see day by day and, as they do not yet hold to strong and sophisticated opinions, are more easily excited and open to try. Therefore, they are generally characterized by low customer acquisition cost. On the flipside, they have a low willingness to pay. Fashion is something interesting to fashion Tourists but generally holds a lesser priority in the way they distribute their budgets among different categories. Therefore, fashion Tourists enjoy buying into something, however, maintain a restrictive behaviour.

 

Fashion Purists – Archivists and Librarians – exert exactly the opposite behaviour. These Purists care a lot, either to complete (Archivist) or expand (Librarians) their already extensive collections of clothing. Overall, they allow themselves hefty price tags for purchases and hold a higher willingness to pay. At the same time, such purchases are often only taken after exerting a large amount of scrutiny on the pieces, which means their purchases are linked to higher customer acquisition costs. Both is a result of the knowledge as well as the priority they put on fashion in their day-to-day life.

 

Similar to the high scrutiny fashion Purists undertake, brand Purists – Authors and Archivists – have high demands on consistency of their favourite brands. After all they link their identities closely to the brands, they are loyal too.

Naturally they expect the brands to put some effort into their storytelling, the brand narrative, and other artifacts such as chosen ambassadors. These Purists reward their favourite brands with a high customer lifetime, as well as frequent and long-lasting purchases.

 

Finally, Brand Tourists – Reporters and Librarians – find less joy in fully buying into a brand, they prefer to pick whatever they feel like in the very moment. Like the archetypes that they are named after, they enjoy keeping a broad collection and discovering a plethora of topics. Brand Tourists have a much lower customer lifetime, sometimes only buying once from a given brand. At the same time, a good singular advertisement, product or concept can be sufficient to convince them for a purchase – they put less scrutiny on consistency in terms of narrative over time.

Final considerations

This article does not look at potential interdependencies between fashion Tourists/Purists and brand Tourists/Purists –there is potentially a link between the likelihood of becoming a brand Purist in the first place depending on the fashion Tourist/Purist characteristics of a consumer. However, looking at variables independently helps to build hypotheses about what marketing activities could be relevant, which is why I believe the separation does make sense.

 

Furthermore, most of the time consumers do not fit one of the archetypes completely perfectly. They flow somewhere in the Tourist/Purist matrix. Nevertheless, knowing overall tendencies in the customer base helps with deciding on which specific activities should be executed.

 

Finally, there are most likely very few brand Purists that are entirely locked in on only one singular brand. Most tend to be interested in a set of brands that are closely linked to each other, so even brand Purists cannot be characterised by loyalty to only ONE brand. Awareness of these nuances is important for brands to find their own place among the set brands their brand Purists shop from.

 

To conclude, the archetypes help brands to ask themselves important questions.

Do they want to amass brand Tourists, to expand their overall customer base, or brand purists that will last them for as long as they maintain a consistent identity?

Do they want fashion Tourists, who might jump into a retail outlet today and convert immediately on an entry-level item, or do they invest in conceptual clothing that convinces the highly demanding fashion Purists, which are keen on the next investment piece?

 

Most likely a customer base across all the four archetypes does the trick and is the most realistic too. It helps to think of consumers along these axes to uncover their needs and to build assumptions on how they will react to specific activations, as well as to understand levels of cost and revenue associated to them.

One thing is for sure, behavioural studies allow us to think about consumers directly in terms of needs and motivations. The Tourist vs Purist distinction is so beautiful because it is holistic, and it sees the value in both. For marketers it is crucial to consider and navigate the implications properly.

 

To me, next to his empowerment of the next generation of designers, Virgil’s legacy is so powerful because he remains unmatched at uncovering nuances in culture and boiling them down to a point where they are very easy to digest. This is how he served Tourists and Purists while being both himself at the same time. His creations are easily understandable and intriguing in the first place but have layers of meaning when one begins to dig deeper into them. His approach connects deep knowledge and a child-like curiosity.

sources and additional links

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