If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an Instagram account can summarise someone’s entire history in a few posts. Brands know this very well, and while some choose to use social media as the ultimate curated marketing tool to sell and profit from their audience, others decide to use it as the physical embodiment of whatever happens in the head of whoever is behind the name. It can be chaotic, raw, cute, highbrow or completely mundane, like your Instagram or mine, but in the modern world, it has proved fundamental for anyone with an image to maintain. There’s only one brand we need to ask: Bottega Veneta, whose return to Instagram with sixty perfectly curated but diverse posts to celebrate its sixtieth anniversary has managed to take the world, once again, by storm. Inspired by this, we present you with some brands that have mastered the art of crafting their identity IRL and online. Happy scrolling!
Jenny Fax’s Instagram brings together pastel-coloured images, childhood references and rather unsettling everyday scenes. Taiwanese designer Shueh Jen-Fang, who founded the cult label in Tokyo, draws on girlhood nostalgia, Japanese pop culture and dark superstitions, giving the account a particular mix of sweetness and morbidity. Soft lace and girlish styling appear alongside much stranger images: a mooncake in a Styrofoam container, an overturned car in the street, models wearing eerie wigs and staring straight into the camera. There are photographs of bars of soap as showroom announcements, piles of car air fresheners and hand-drawn doodles, all sharing space with the collections. The result is an unusual selection of images in which childhood memories, everyday objects and a slightly darker sense of humour are successfully brought together.
BARRAGÁN’s grid doesn't care about selling you clothes, even if it does. Scrolling through it is rather like going through the burner account of a very online, slightly unhinged artist, which it kind of is, with many posts shared by Víctor Barragán’s own personal Instagram account. The feed brings together grainy, raw, sweaty images, outstanding casting and blurry flash photos of characters pulled straight off a dark dance floor at 4 AM. The garments often seem like an afterthought to the scene unfolding around them, but those scenes couldn't exist without them. You can scroll through dozens of posts without coming across the same thing twice. Its cast of characters, references and visual obsessions offers a glimpse into a corner of fashion that rarely makes it onto the usual brand accounts.
Kartik Research’s feed has the warmth of a sun-bleached film roll, with New Delhi and its surroundings providing the setting for much of its imagery. Founded by Kartik Kumra, the brand brings traditional Indian craftsmanship into modern menswear, with artisan embroidery and hand-loomed fabrics taking centre stage. Its posts move between white-curtain studio backdrops and dusty outdoor scenes shot around India, often placing the garments in settings that connect them to their origins. The clothes remain the focus, photographed with a young, easygoing sensibility. Close-ups reveal the fabrics and intricate embroidery, while other images show the pieces worn in everyday settings. The account also gives visibility to the people and skilled work behind each garment.
Hodakova’s account offers a closer look at Ellen Hodakova Larsson’s approach to fashion and the objects that find their way into her collections. The Swedish designer works almost entirely with upcycled materials, taking old garments and everyday objects apart and turning them into something else. The feed moves between fitting images, ornate classical interiors and direct beauty portraits, with models often staring, or appearing to stare, straight into the camera. There are close-ups of chunky rope textures, deconstructed leather shoe heels and details that reveal how familiar objects have been given a new purpose. Oil paintings and other visual references appear alongside the collections, adding to the unusual but very pretty selection of images that make up the account.
Gimaguas’ feed captures a specific kind of Barcelona lifestyle, between late-night photographs, fashion sketches and images taken from the sisters’ own visual references. Founded by twins Sayana and Claudia Durany, the brand has built a recognisable world around an easygoing approach to dressing, with a certain hedonism running through its imagery. Studio portraits sit alongside grainy flash videos of their latest experiments at night, hand-drawn coloured-pencil illustrations and graphic compositions in deep pinks, vivid purples and analogue textures. Gallery installations and old-school fashion sketches add another layer to the feed, with the sisters’ own world and the city's nightlife giving it much of its character.
Meryll Rogge’s Instagram brings together the designer’s collections and a much wider range of visual references. The Belgian designer draws on her Antwerp background through an eclectic mix of styling, prints and unexpected combinations. The grid jumps between clean lookbook images, black-and-white portraits, text posts about art books and close-ups of old wooden objects, with graphic layouts and chunky typography recalling vintage book covers and independent posters. There is a real interest in print, archival imagery and objects with a past, which runs through the way the clothes are styled and presented. Browsing the account can take you from a collection image to a reference you might want to look up, giving the feed the character of a personal collection of things worth keeping.
Sundae School’s Instagram has the energy of a finsta belonging to a cool group of friends splitting their time between Seoul and New York. Founded by siblings Dae and Cindy Lim, the Asian-American label describes itself as a “smokewear” brand, drawing on cannabis culture and the experience of growing up between different cultural expectations. Its feed brings together gritty, early-2000s-style flash photography of kids smoking, kissing or hanging out on city stoops, with storefront typography, tourist brochures and other seemingly ordinary fragments of city life. These appear alongside product shots, digital lookbooks and close-ups of bags and puffer jackets, giving the clothes a place within the wider world the brand is documenting. The strong sense of community around Sundae School and the particular youth culture shaped by its Korean-American identity are key for the brand, which makes browsing its Instagram feel a little like being let into a world you wouldn't necessarily come across elsewhere.
