Ferrari was one of the first and most well-known brands to attach its famous logo and/or prancing horse mascot to many non-automotive products such as hats, perfumes and pens, but now almost all the premium and luxury car brands — plus many mainstream marques too — offer merchandise to customise the car itself, or accessories to use well beyond it.
Fancy a gear selector topper in the colours of the French flag for your new all-electric Renault 5 E-Tech to express a certain gallic flair? No problem. Or some Tumi luggage possibly made slightly more go-faster via ‘McLaren orange’ colour and trim options? They’ve got you covered; there are several dozen to choose from on Tumi’s website right now. Or how about a pair of extremely expensive, lairy and limited-edition Maybach sunglasses? Or shapely speakers made by Tidal and given a Bugatti Royale twist? Just head on over to Bugatti.com.
Why so much choice and why now? Because, at a base level, cars are emotional and expensive purchases and well-established car brands and their products have characters that suggest something about their owners in a way that washing machine makers and their merely ‘white goods’ don’t. To give just three examples, Alfa Romeo is associated with power and passion, Volvo with safety and Scandinavian design and Bentley with a certain British luxury and boldness.
And among those so-called ‘legacy’ brands — ones with long and often interesting human as well as engineering and design histories — leaning on such character is an increasingly important marketing and sales strategy for shifting their cars and maintaining interest in-between, especially when faced with very new (and mainly Chinese) newcomers who can ‘only’ trade on excellent technology and lower prices.
In the past year, Bentley has teamed up with Cody Gakpo (above), Lucien Laviscount, Mai Ikuzawa and Greg Williams to promote the brand's lifestyle ambitions.
'Wearing a baseball hat with Porsche or Ferrari embroidered on its front doesn’t only tell the world you’ve picked your "team", it suggests you know a bit more about the subject matter than someone who has just gone out and leased a BYD Dolphin Surf'
In this context, wearing a baseball hat with Porsche or Ferrari embroidered on its front, doesn’t only tell the world you’ve picked your ‘team’. Even if you only follow those brands’ motorsport activities, rather than owning one of their actual cars, it suggests you know a bit more about the subject matter than someone who has just gone out and leased a BYD Dolphin Surf due to its competitive monthly rate.
Customer brand loyalty is hard for carmakers to gain in the first place and even harder to keep, but if the associated fashionable automotive accessory is made to a decent standard, it can act as a subtle and more compact reminder to the consumer of how high quality, design-led and discerning that brand is, which could be helpful come vehicle renewal time. Equally, a bad car-related fashion accessory — from pens that don’t write very well to any product the attached logo of which feels and perhaps is only poorly stuck on and sometimes falls off — can have the reverse effect.
So which car brands are making credible fashion accessories right now and how? Perhaps ironically, Ferrari, the brand previously most easily accused of putting its name and logo on too many accessories deemed to be of low material value, embarked on rectifying that image. In 2019, it appointed Rocco Iannone as its ‘brand diversification creative director’. Since then, the man whose CV included Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Pal Zileri has been deftly transforming Ferrari fashion ever since by creating regular collections for men, women and children.
'We are aiming to be not just a fashion brand, but to create a new channel through which to communicate our values'
As Nicola Boari, Ferrari Chief Brand Diversification Officer told Ferrari magazine back in 2021: 'I think that previously the right person to interpret the brand — the way we interpret it in the cars — was missing. Nobody buys a Ferrari just to go from point A to point B, and not even to drive fast. Once experienced, however, you remain committed, you appreciate its uniqueness. The same is true for clothes: who needs another collection? For this reason, we are aiming to be not just a fashion brand, but to create a new channel through which to communicate our values. I’d say we are talking about lifestyle. Of a style of life, literally.'
By focusing on a fashion designer’s eye for cut and finish rather than a marketeer’s sense of smell for profit alone, the Ferrari fashion range has expanded handsomely at different price points and with credible capsule collections including one based around current Formula One (F1) driver Charles Leclercq.
Rocco Iannone, Alba Larsen and Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari's new flagship store on Old Bond Street, which opened in the middle of March.
Ferrari’s dedicated in-house fashion designer decision is still an unusual one in the world of car brands, but an obvious shortcut for automotive makers is to buddy-up with a fashion brand or designer with a similar stature or set of values and then create a limited collaboration which makes sense for both companies.
Logical examples include collaborations based around the same culture, nationality and customer base — like long-standing Italian luxury brands Zegna (fabric and clothing) developing bespoke automotive grade material for Maserati car interior upholstery and associated clothing and accessories — or ones where some kind of technology sharing results in an interesting product not possible to make as well, or at all, by each brand alone.
The Rolls-Royce Phantom Syntopia, created in collaboration with Dutch fashion futurist Iris van Herpen.
A great — if extremely expensive multi-million pound — example, is the Rolls-Royce Phantom Syntopia ‘one-of-one’ luxury limousine unveiled in 2023. Created with Dutch fashion futurist Iris van Herpen, the car features her intricate three-dimensional petal designs incorporated into the Phantom’s already-acclaimed ‘Starlight Headliner’ and ‘Gallery’ dashboard cabin features, among other delightfully resolved interior and exterior details.
Then Rolls-Royce colour and material designer, Celina Mettang, quipped that the fashion designer featured on her design team’s mood board at least once a month and added: 'This was a match made in heaven as our two brands share so many common goals: instantly recognisable style, striving for perfection, commitment to excellence and the creation of rare, singular, tailor-made luxury.'
A much more affordable and recent ‘car x fashion’ collaboration is from two like-minded British institutions — Mini and Paul Smith. From spring 2026, the Mini Cooper will offer a ‘Paul Smith Edition’ as an ongoing trim level from £32,705. Featuring the veteran designer’s unusual exterior colour combinations paired with non-automotive interior design material and finish choices, the car also unsurprisingly includes a few Paul Smith signature rainbow-inspired stripes too. But the whole thing is executed with style, flair and restraint.
'I’ve seen collaborations where the designer literally just puts their name on the car and maybe adds one red line. I was determined not to do that. It would be embarrassing'
It no doubt helps that the brands’ relationship already stretched back to 1998, when a limited production run car was made, and more recently in 2021 when Smith and Mini developed the Strip concept car together to explore new materials and finishes. It helps too that Smith understands the collaboration game well, only gets involved when he wants to and when he does, personally gets his hands dirty on the project. 'I’ve seen collaborations where the designer literally just puts their name on the car and maybe adds one red line. I was determined not to do that. It would be embarrassing,' he says.
By contrast, his subtle additions, including a rainbow thread section to the ‘Six O’Clock’ spoke of the steering wheel and thoughtful, but very non-automotive, exterior colour combinations — like a cream body and olive-green roof — demonstrates Smith’s good taste and sense of what works, well beyond his clothing expertise. 'I feel passionate about texture and getting people to think about it,' he says. 'That "rough and smooth" can be a Harris tweed with a silk shirt. In a car, you can have rough and smooth too, but it’s rarely there.'
From the carmaker’s side, this more professional approach to fashion and accessories beyond the car itself — especially within the last decade — is reflected by many of their traditional ‘design directors’ job titles changing to ‘chief design officer’ or ‘chief creative officer’. As the newer titles suggest, those holding them now have remits which are far broader than just the car’s exterior and interior design to encompass the look, feel and function of the complete brand user experience, from mobile phone app to dealer showroom and merchandise to brand extensions.
Breitling and Aston Martin have collaborated with the chicly named Navitimer B01 Chronograph 43 Aston Martin Formula One™ Team.
As chief creative officer of Aston Martin, Marek Reichman comments about the famous winged brand’s various side projects, including super high luxury apartments in Miami: 'I believe in the consistency of design that "The Wing" has,' he declares. 'I’ve been heavily involved in bicycles, motorbikes and residences, whatever we do. You have to be. It’s hard because obviously there’s a day job [in designing cars], but you’ve got to rely on a very good team too.'
This greater sophistication in fashion and accessory merchandising and measured automotive brand diversification, is particularly marked in the better legacy marques. But it doesn’t preclude some of them still making the odd fashion faux pas or two. Just be careful.
And for the avoidance of any doubt, I don’t want a Bentley dog basket or Porsche ice cube tray for Christmas. Really.