The Tamesis
Elena Bonvicini is the founder of Los Angeles denim brand EB Denim. She is not an influencer; she is an influencer. She doesn’t have millions or tens of thousands of followers. But when Everlane approached her about a partnership, she agreed to do so under her own name rather than her brand’s.
The founder doesn’t think her brand is ready for a partnership, but she’s keen to showcase her design talents in a new context and build her profile as a designer in the process. “What if I used my design lens to create my capsule of essentials for Everlane customers?” she said. “I feel like this is a great opportunity for me to introduce myself as a designer to an audience outside of EB Denim.”
“From our early conversations, we felt it was important that this collaboration was about Elena and not just a brand-to-brand collaboration,” said Everlane CEO Alfred Chang. “We were drawn to her creative vision and the way she thinks about denim. Positioning it under her name kept the focus on that point of view; it made the collaboration more personal.”
The result is an eight-piece capsule collection, including seven pairs of jeans and a T-shirt modeled after the EB Denim collection. “I stole some [styles] That includes EB Denim’s best-selling baggy low-rise jeans, Bonvicini joked, working with the U.S. retailer’s factories to rework them using fabrics from Everlane.
Everlane and Bonvicini hosted an event in Los Angeles on February 19 to celebrate the collaboration ahead of the launch. The next day, Everlane, which has 1 million Instagram followers, posted a series of stories tagging Bonvicini’s personal account, which at the time had fewer than 10,000 followers (compared to EB Denim’s roughly 77,000 followers). This will see Bonvicini’s face appear on the Everlane website and on billboards in Everlane store windows.
As social media has grown into a necessary brand-building tool, personal branding has become a way for founders to enhance their personal image and, in turn, sell more clothes and accessories. Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, stress has been building. By 2024, 91% of 101 fashion industry professionals surveyed fashion business say they feel at least some pressure to be visible on social media as personal brands become increasingly linked to business.
In recent years, lesser-known designers have lost sales to influential brands, which have emerged thick and fast in the post-COVID boom. Since then, their power has waned as the influencer landscape has changed, leaving room for brand founders to seek success by building relationships with their followers and promoting products through their profiles. in the most recent fashion business At a Gen Z event in Los Angeles, fashion and beauty founders emphasized using social media to connect with followers and grow their brand’s reach, but with one caveat: the product has to be good. But in an increasingly crowded brand landscape, reliable products don’t always speak for themselves. Brand founders need to speak out.
