Daft Punk and fashion A love story almost as long as their careers

In 2021 the world's most celebrated dance/electronic music duo, Daft Punk, disbanded after an extraordinary 28-year career. And today, May 12, their most important album, Random Access Memories, marked its 10th anniversary - eliciting no small amount of nostalgia from the public. The duo, formed by Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter in 1993, had decided since the first successes of their career to wear masks to leave only their music in the spotlight – a decision that was the basis of their very rapid rise but also made them style icons. Over the years Daft Punk have not only signed their own merch and close collaborations with Hedi Slimane, Virgil Abloh and Gosha Rubchinskiy but also secretly influenced much of that nostalgic aesthetic, suspended between the 80s and 90s, which now goes for the most part starting from the obsession with synth sounds, the craze for vintage, graphics with a sci-fi flavor and, more generally, for the ability to make one's music part of a layered and accomplished storytelling. Suffice it to say that their former artistic director, Gaildas Loaec, later became the founder of Maison Kitsune, photographers such as Peter Lindbergh and Terry Richardson made them protagonists of countless covers and photoshooting while the collaboration with Slimane remains legendary, for which they signed the playlist of saint laurent's SS13 show.

Later, they were the protagonists of one of the most exclusive drop sneakers ever, together with A BATHING APE*, which produced only one hundred examples of Bapesta FS-001 'Daft Punk' and made them available through an extremely localized drop online. After Slimane, fashion collaborations followed with the opening of a pop-store in Los Angeles, in 2017, which caused audience files so huge as to block traffic: Henry Levy of Enfants Riches Deprimés signs two pieces for their collection of merch that become very rare collectible items, the same do Gosha Rubchinskiy (then at the height of his glory) and Virgil Abloh who produces for them a T-shirt included in the debut collection which will then be followed by a line of merch in its own right that includes satin jackets and skateboards. 2017 ends with the collaboration with DARKDRON and the iconic Italian pulp illustrator Emanuele Taglietti.

Later, in addition to the classic merch inspired by various collaborations and appearances in numerous magazines also with photo shoots taken by their long-time friend Hedi Slimane, the relationship between Daft Punk and fashion was celebrated by a grandiose exhibition at the Paris Philharmonic, which compares them to Kraftwerk and Laurent Garnier and examines them, through a retrospective on music and costumes , the impact on the zeitgeist of world fashion in more than twenty years of career that was supposed to culminate with the soundtrack of Occhiali Neri, the next film by Dario Argento that had started production last April and of which little or nothing is yet known. But everything seems to be over for now: the separation of the two still seems friendly, so a reunion in the future is not excluded. For now we will have to settle for a discography as big as their cultural legacy.