Taylor Swift's dress and the waiting business

We are immersed in Paris Haute Couture Week. The collections presented these days have left absolutely spectacular pieces, especially from Daniel Roseberry for Schiaparelli and Jonathan Anderson in his haute couture debut for Dior. But, despite the creative display that is capturing all eyes these days, there is a dress that is eclipsing them all. A very unique dress because, in reality, no one has seen it yet. And the more time passes without knowing what it looks like, the more conversations, speculations, and expectations it generates. I'm referring to the one Taylor Swift wore at her wedding to American football player Travis Kelce, held on July 3rd.Beyond the possibility that the images will be reserved for a future exclusive, this situation fits perfectly with the logic of the attention economy. In fact, a good part of the fashion world revolves around a concept that has become commonplace in the sector: hype. More than promoting a product, hype consists of building desire for it before it exists – or before it is accessible – by feeding rumors, leaks, small clues, and waiting periods that keep the conversation alive. In short, hype is the art of turning waiting into desire, because whoever controls time also controls the narrative and decides when, how, and who will have access to what everyone is waiting to see. Precisely at a time when we have become accustomed to getting almost anything immediately, it is here that marketing strategies manage to trap us. Desire, after all, usually reaches its peak intensity when we don't yet have what we want, but it dissolves with surprising speed as soon as we get it.

The urban fashion brand Supreme is one of the main drivers behind turning this strategy into a successful model. Before a product is launched, the hype has already begun to drop breadcrumbs: some images are leaked, specialized accounts speculate about the new collection, the brand confirms a piece, and for weeks, the conversation keeps growing. When everything has already boiled over and consumers are salivating more than Pavlov's dog, the moment of the drop arrives: a limited, sudden, and temporary launch. Scarcity ceases to be an inconvenience to become a powerful marketing tool. The fewer units available, the more exclusive the product seems and the more intense the desire generated by the next launch will be.This strategy, despite being particularly characteristic of urban fashion, is not exclusive to younger generations. Hermès, aimed at a much more adult and privileged audience, has been a true master at turning waiting into an inseparable component of its iconic Birkin. It is not enough to be able to afford the nearly 12,000 euros that one of the most common versions costs (or the 100,000 for the most exclusive ones). A new client may have to wait between one and three years or, even, never receive a purchase offer. In this case, the hype is not built solely on waiting, but also on uncertainty. Because what is really sold is not just a bag, but the privilege of being able to have it.In an era where we live permanently projected towards the future, often dedicating more time and energy to imagining vacations than to enjoying them, Zygmunt Bauman's words take on full meaning when he stated that consumer society does not produce satisfaction, but a permanent desire. The hype is one of its most refined expressions: it has turned time into one of the most valuable commodities to trade with. And this mechanism is so deeply internalized that, even in the absence of images from Taylor Swift's wedding, instead of limiting ourselves to waiting, we have already turned her dress into an object of desire.