Your Favorite Twitter Comedian Probably Has Parade Underwear

Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.As Congress debated the COVID relief package, a joke ricocheted around Twitter to the effect that our stimulus checks had been bargained down to a pair of Parade underwear. By that point, the ubiquity of the brand, especially on the platform, had become an in-joke in itself. Its colorful wares were a currency of their own, a kind of e-girl Bitcoin. At the very least, the probability that a pair or two might show up in a microinfluencer’s mailbox felt higher than the likelihood of the government getting us paid in a timely manner.
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This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

While the lingerie campaigns of yesteryear were about models who exuded untouchable perfection (even the ’90’s Calvin Klein ads were a parade of scuzzy-chic seraphim) for several years now, the market has been about relatability over retouching. Despite their varying aesthetics, Aerie, Savage x Fenty, and ThirdLove have all staked their claim to this unfiltered approach: size inclusivity, diverse casting, and a focus on dressing for oneself rather than for a generic male gaze. Parade, which was founded by Cami Téllez and Jack DeFuria in 2019, is among the growing number of brands in this field. Karlie Kloss and Shakira are investors, and Parade raised its profile last month by collaborating with Juicy Couture, a name that its Gen Z target audience probably perceives as retro, complete with a campaign that cheekily evoked tabloid images from the aughts.

An image from the Juicy Couture collaboration campaign.
Courtesy of Parade.

For that audience, the lo-fi aesthetic is what sells now. Explains Zoe Cohen, Parade’s head of brand marketing, “People want to see the behind-the-scenes just as much as the finished product.” In fact, Cohen says that they’ve noticed that casual phone snapshots or even blurry videos “almost always get higher engagement on our Instagram feed than our campaign images.” And as at-home loungewear trendlets have risen during the pandemic (tie-dye sweatsuits, fashion…

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Source: elle.com