Coachella Pitches

This week, my inbox has been dominated by Coachella pitches. No matter that the festival itself takes place thousands of miles away in California: such is its influence that it’s deemed to be just as interesting to British journalists as to American ones. Is Coachella as influential as it thinks it is? Yes and no. My instinct is that its influence is on the wane. 

Like many others during the pandemic, I really missed festivals, both for the music and the fashion. So I was fully expecting to be hooked by Coachella, the first big festival of the year. I know that high-street brands have their eyes trained on it, and will rush the strongest trends into production faster than you can say “Harry Styles in a sequinned catsuit”. 

But personally (Harry and Shania’s sequin numbers apart) I was underwhelmed.

Coachella has never been edgy, but this year, the fashion seemed even more clinical and predictable than usual. 

Worse, that fast-fashion brand rush in exhorting us to “get the look” aligns it with a set of values that go against the grain of current concerns about sustainability. That fintech company, Willa, offered free private jet travel to Coachella influencers aligned it even more with values that have never felt more out of fashion. 

The lesson? “Cool” ebbs and flows. It’s subjective. Don’t align yourself with Coachella blindly, without reading the room.