Okonkwo Prelims

Salvatore Ferragamo Italian

Yves Saint Laurent French

Donna Karan American

Yoji Yamamoto Japanese

However, luxury brands also feature brand names that evoke a specific coun-

try of origin and sometimes do not typically represent the countries of the

brands’ founders. These brand names have been adopted for strategic asso-

ciations with particular countries or for other reasons. They include the

following:

Jimmy Choo British

Comme des Garcons Japanese

JP Tod’s Italian

Samantha Thavasa Japanese

Paul & Joe French

The adoption of a brand name for a luxury goods company increasingly

requires careful handling. Since the brand name is the first point of contact

between the consumer and the brand, the name should evoke all the associa-

tions that make up the brand. Consumers should easily be able to decipher a

brand’s connotations from its name without being in contact with its products

or advertisements. This is quite challenging to achieve especially since the

traditional practice in luxury fashion has been for fashion designers to lend

their names, personalities, origins and beliefs to their brands.

The genesis of this practice can be traced to the French and Italian fash-

ion designers of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as

Pascal Guerlain, Thierry Hermès and Guccio Gucci. During their time, the

notion of branding was less sophisticated and focused more on differentiation

through brand name and product design. This meant that the business devel-

opment aspects of the brands often came after the name choice, indicating

that the brand concept was not the determinant of the brand name. This

approach has been successful for more than two centuries. However, the

twenty-first century branding context requires the application of a defined

strategy in every aspect of brand development, including brand naming. This

factor has led to an emerging trend of brand name adoption that reflects a

specific message and appeal to consumers. A classic example is the brand,

‘Comme des Garcons’, launched by Japanese designer, Rei Kawakubo,

which doesn’t have its origin in France or the French language. The brand

creators realized that as a country, France is recognized as having a strong

luxury fashion heritage. They therefore used French fashion appealin the

brand name concept to reach consumers who might not ordinarily associate

a Japanese brand name to luxury fashion. Also when Diego Della Valle

created the Tod’s brand in 1978, he chose the name JP Tod’s from the Boston

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luxury fashion branding