The Secret System Which Turns Fashion Brands Into Cults

Fabio Gampl · Jun 8, 2025

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
— Aristotle

Most creative business owners want to build an influential brand.

Something unforgettable. Timeless. Culture-shaping.

Something that stands out, others look up to, and celebrate.

And it makes sense.

It earns you the freedom to create on your own terms and be recognized for it.

But why do so few succeed?

What’s the secret behind those rare fashion brands that rise above the ordinary?

For the last months, I’ve been deeply obsessed with this question, reading, analyzing, and deconstructing some of the world’s most successful brands.

I reverse-engineered how their strategy, story, design, and psychology all work together, not just on their own, but as a complete system.

What I found changed completely how I think about branding.

Most people treat brand identity as a static thing:

Logo, color palette, tagline, done.

But industry-defining brands don’t work that way.

They’re not built like a rigid structure.

They’re more like living organisms.

Breathing, evolving, growing.

Every element influences every other.

Every action feeds back into the system, either reinforcing or balancing it.

In this letter, I will share with you my findings.

A deep dive into the inner workings of the ecosystem where an idea can organically and authentically grow into something people deeply resonate with.

Let’s start.

Reframing Branding as a Living System

We’ve been taught to think of branding as a static step-by-step process.

Define your audience. Choose a niche. Pick your colors. Design a logo. Write a tagline. Post consistently.

But if it were really that simple, why do most brands still fail to stand out?

Why do they feel disconnected, forced, or quickly forgettable?

Because great branding doesn’t come from following a checklist.

It comes from understanding how different parts connect, influence each other, and create patterns over time.

Think of the human body.

Your heart, lungs, brain, gut, skin.

They all play different roles, but they’re deeply interconnected.

If one system is off, say your sleep or nutrition, it doesn’t just affect that part.

It affects your energy, your mood, your focus, everything.

That’s how we should think about branding.

It’s seeing the whole person, not just the symptoms.

It’s understanding that no part exists in isolation.

Every action ripples through the entire system.

Once you see this, you stop asking:

“How do I design my brand?”

And start asking:

“How do I design the network for my brand to naturally grow and evolve?”

This shift in thinking changes everything.

That’s where timeless brands are born.

Not from surface decoration but from deep, systemic design.

And the good thing:

The core system and its building blocks stay the same, no matter the industry.

  1. Philosophy – The Soul
  2. Culture – The Environment
  3. Psychology – The Mind
  4. Story – The Spine
  5. Brand Voice – The Personality
  6. Design Language – The Appearance

Learning and understanding this gives you a powerful advantage over your competition.

With time, you'll sharpen your brand more and more, creating a brand that deeply resonates with people.

You can go infinitely deep on every component.

For now, my focus is more on explaining the basics and how everything works together.

Subscribe to the newsletter to stay up-to-date with future, more detailed analyses of every component.

The 6 Pillars Of Iconic Brand Design

Every fashion brand is built on six fundamental components.

There are two key lessons to take away:

  1. What each component is
  2. How they’re all interconnected

We’ll start by breaking down each pillar on its own, getting to the core of what it does and why it matters.

Then we’ll zoom out and look at the bigger picture:

How these elements form a complete, functional system.

As you read on, you'll begin to notice how each part connects with the others, revealing a more holistic understanding of the whole system.

To start, we have to begin with the soul, the deeper meaning around which everything else is built.

Philosophy – The Soul

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”
— Simon Sinek

At the core of every brand lies its philosophy.

This is the deeper reason the brand exists, beyond making money or selling products.

It’s the foundation of purpose, values, and beliefs that guide everything it does.

When this philosophy aligns with what people believe in, it creates something powerful:

A sense of belonging.

Humans naturally seek connection and meaning, and when a brand reflects their inner world, they feel seen, understood, and drawn in.

Without a clear philosophy, a brand quickly feels hollow.

It loses meaning, direction, and the ability to truly resonate.

But with it, you have a direction tool.

A clear starting point that shapes every decision and every other part of your brand.

Take Balenciaga, for example.

Balenciaga’s Summer Show 2023 perfectly illustrates how every action is rooted in their philosophy:

The show took place in a literal mud-covered arena.

Models trudged through sludge in distressed, dystopian outfits, some carrying plush toys styled like trauma victims.

It wasn’t just a dramatic aesthetic choice.

It was a statement.

A representation of what the brand stands for:

Pushing against the polished image of luxury fashion and questioning society’s ideas of right and wrong.

“Fashion loves boxes and labels more than anything. Luxury, not luxury, street, couture, good, bad, buzz, viral, all the same, who cares. Putting luxury fashion into the box of polished, exclusive, and visually expensive is limited and pretty old school.”
— Demna (Balenciaga’s creative director)

So to build a strong brand people can connect with, start by clearly defining your brand’s “why.”

Ask yourself:

Use this philosophy as the foundation for all brand decisions, ensuring every touchpoint reflects and reinforces this core meaning.

People should instinctively know what you stand for without ever having to look into the “About Us” page.

But here is the catch:

Without anchoring your philosophy in culture, all you have is an idea floating in a vacuum.

Culture – The Environment

"To succeed in branding, you have to understand culture, because culture is what shapes people’s perceptions and behavior."
— Martin Lindstrom

Every brand exists within a wider cultural environment.

This environment is made of:

Together, these elements weave a complex and living web.

This web shapes not only what people care about but also how they act, decide, and interact with the world, including the brands they choose to embrace or reject.

Successful brands don’t just respond to this cultural environment; they actively participate in it.

Do you see how this ties back to your brand philosophy?

Your brand philosophy has to hit a real tension or desire in today's culture, so it's relevant and people care.

Culture is what gives your philosophy context.

Without that grounding in shared experience, your philosophy risks floating aimlessly, disconnected from the world it hopes to influence.

When your brand aligns with the cultural moment, it gains attention and lasting impact.

Ignore it, and you risk fading into irrelevance.

Let’s take Balenciaga again.

Many creatives today feel skeptical of traditional institutions like fashion, media, and politics.

Balenciaga’s philosophy resonates with those who question established norms.

It embraces imperfection, provokes thought, and challenges the polished image often associated with high fashion.

That’s what makes Balenciaga so relevant.

It taps into a cultural conversation people genuinely care about.

To make use of this principle, you have to become an active participant in your chosen subculture, joining the current topics and conversations:

That's why many brands anchor their identity in the life, values, or cultural background of the founder.

They are already immersed in it.

Think of culture as the environment your brand lives in; adapting to it and contributing to it keeps your brand alive and relevant.

But even after defining your philosophy and engaging with the cultural conversation around it, things probably feel too abstract to be useful.

To make it practical, you need to understand how your audience thinks and feels.

Psychology – The Mind

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits them and sells itself."
— Peter Drucker

Psychology reveals the person behind the crowd.

You zoom into the broader culture, select a representative individual, and analyze their mindset to understand how to communicate in a deeply personal and relevant way.

Big groups feel abstract.

Focusing on one detailed persona makes it personal and easier to connect.

This research directly shapes your communication style and design language, creating a more personal brand experience.

Take A-COLD-WALL* for example:

A-COLD-WALL* speaks to ambitious, creative individuals from the working-class who grew up in urban environments, value authenticity, and are aware of social injustices.

Every output speaks to this person:

Their storytelling explores topics like identity, class, and society.

The design combines architecture and industrial elements with high fashion.

They also collaborate with artists who have similar values, like Gabriel Moses.

All these choices are what make this brand so cohesive in its appearance.

Questions to define your persona:

1. Basic Info & Background

2. Daily Life & Routine

3. Personality & Values

4. Emotional Landscape

5. Beliefs & Worldview

6. Social & Cultural Identity

7. Media & Technology

8. Communication Style

9. Shopping & Consumption

10. Challenges & Pain Points

11. Aspirations & Motivations

Combine all the answers into a clear, concise portrait of one person.

This high-resolution image gives you a lot of information about how to tailor your brand perfectly to your customer.

So to sum up, so far:

  1. You chose a philosophy.
  2. You checked if it's relevant in today's world.
  3. You become an active member of the subculture.
  4. You developed a high-resolution image of your audience.

That's your brand foundation.

But how do you communicate these attributes effectively now?

The answer:

Storytelling.

Story – The Spine

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.”
— Seth Godin

Storytelling is the most powerful tool to create deep emotional connections.

Humans have been telling stories for tens of thousands of years.

It’s literally baked into our evolution.

Stories stir emotion, awaken empathy, untangle complexity, shape our sense of self, and move us to remember, believe, and act.

They are how we make sense of the world and how we connect to something greater.

Now that you’ve built your foundation, you’re ready to build your brand’s story:

Your story becomes the bridge, translating the internal into the external.

It transforms the abstract into something tangible.

The invisible becomes something people can see, hear, and feel.

A great starting point for creating your brand story is to use a proven framework called Brand Archetypes.

Rooted in Carl Jung’s theory of universal archetypes, these are timeless characters and narratives that show up across cultures and eras.

Patterns deeply embedded in the human psyche.

Here is a quick overview of the 12 brand archetypes with fashion-focused examples:

  1. The Innocent — A return to purity and joy
    Brand: Jacquemus — Childlike wonder, Mediterranean sun, poetic simplicity.
  2. The Explorer — The journey to freedom and self-discovery
    Brand: Arc’teryx — Performance gear for those seeking the wild.
  3. The Sage — Uncovering truth through knowledge
    Brand: Maison Margiela — Deconstructing fashion to reveal deeper meaning.
  4. The Hero — Overcoming great odds to prove worth
    Brand: Nike — Timeless storytelling of courage and greatness.
  5. The Outlaw — Breaking the system to create change
    Brand: Balenciaga — Provocative, boundary-pushing, and unapologetically subversive.
  6. The Magician — Turning dreams into reality
    Brand: Iris van Herpen — Fuses tech and couture into wearable art.
  7. The Everyman — Belonging and common humanity
    Brand: Uniqlo — Simple, functional clothing for everyone.
  8. The Lover — Passion, connection, and beauty
    Brand: Dior — Romanticism, elegance, and deep emotional storytelling.
  9. The Jester — Lightening up and enjoying life
    Brand: Moschino — Playful, ironic fashion that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
  10. The Caregiver — Protecting and nurturing others
    Brand: Patagonia — Ethical, responsible, and earth-conscious.
  11. The Creator — Bringing ideas to life through imagination
    Brand: Rick Owens — Visionary, artistic, and uncompromisingly original.
  12. The Ruler — Establishing order and excellence
    Brand: Louis Vuitton — Status, luxury, and global cultural leadership.

To build a brand story using archetypes, start by choosing one that reflects both your brand’s core and your audience’s deeper desire.

Each archetype carries with it an emotional promise, a feeling or transformation your audience longs for.

That promise becomes the heart of your story.

For example, the Hero archetype promises courage, inspiring people to overcome obstacles and rise to greatness.

Once you’ve chosen your archetype, keep the structure of your story simple and clear:

challenge → shift → outcome.

This narrative should shape everything.

Your story isn’t just something you tell, it’s something you show through every detail.

From your design and voice to your content and visuals, consistency is what makes the story believable.

But above all, remember this:

Your customer is the hero.

People don’t just want to hear your story, they want to see themselves in it.

Framing your brand as the trusted advisor and your customer as the hero brings the story to life.

From here, every output, every message, every design, can align with that story.

Let’s start by exploring the first key element which expresses your story:

Your brand voice.

Brand Voice – The Personality

"Tone is the personality of the voice you want your brand to have."
— Ann Handley

Your brand voice shapes how you communicate.

It influences the emotional tone people associate with you.

Not just what you say, but how you say it.

This makes your brand familiar, relatable, and real.

Think of it as your brand’s personality in words.

Playful. Calm. Bold. Thoughtful.

Whatever fits your story.

Here are the 6 main building blocks of any brand voice:

  1. Repetition — Using consistent words or phrases to emphasize core messages.
  2. Imagery — Descriptive language that helps your audience picture your brand.
  3. Themes — Repeated ideas or expressions that reinforce your brand identity.
  4. Point of View — The unique angle or personality your brand adopts.
  5. Tone — The feeling or attitude your brand conveys.
  6. Underlying Meaning — Subtle messages and emotions beneath your words.

Jacquemus’ Instagram bio is a masterclass in this.

“JE M'APPELLE SIMON PORTE JACQUEMUS, J'AIME LE BLEU ET LE BLANC, LES RAYURES, LE SOLEIL, LES FRUITS, LA VIE, LA POÉSIE, MARSEILLE ET LES ANNÉES 80”

Written in the first person, it starts with a simple yet personal introduction:

“My name is Simon Porte Jacquemus.”

What follows is a poetic list of what he loves:

“blue and white, stripes, the sun, fruits, life, poetry, Marseille, and the 80s.”

The repetition of “I love…” (in French, “j’aime”) gives the statement rhythm and a sense of intimacy.

It doesn’t promote a product directly; instead, it repeats emotional and visual references showing the world the brand lives in.

Imagery plays a key role here.

Words like “blue and white,” “the sun,” “fruits,” and “Marseille” evoke a vivid, sensory mood, warm, coastal, and joyful.

You can almost feel the southern French atmosphere.

The bio consistently highlights themes of nostalgia, nature, simplicity, and poetic living, all central to the Jacquemus brand.

More recently, these emotions are being expressed through an increasingly surreal lens, adding depth to its aesthetic.

The point of view is very personal.

Using the designer’s own name and preferences, the brand positions itself not as a corporate entity, but as a person sharing a feeling.

The tone is soft and sincere, it feels unforced and almost childlike in its honesty, which makes it refreshing and memorable.

And the underlying meaning?

Jacquemus is not just selling clothes.

He’s sharing a worldview, one rooted in emotion, memory, and aesthetic joy.

If you resonate with these feelings, this brand is for you.

So, to build a strong brand voice, consistently use language, tone, and themes that reflect your story in every communication.

Document these guidelines clearly to ensure every message feels authentic and instantly recognizable.

With your brand voice established, you’re now ready to move on to the final piece:

Bringing your brand to life through design.

Design Language – The Appearance

“Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.”
— Paul Rand

Design language is the consistent visual vocabulary a brand uses to express its identity.

That’s why defining your identity comes first before making any design decisions.

Without a clear identity, design becomes mere surface-level decoration.

Aesthetic without meaning.

Your identity gives purpose to every visual choice.

It explains why you use certain colors, why a particular font feels right, and whether your forms should be geometric or organic.

You are not selecting visuals randomly; you are translating your brand’s story into shape, color, and texture.

To create a cohesive design language, you need to define key elements such as:

  1. Color palette
  2. Typography
  3. Shapes and forms
  4. Materials and textures
  5. Imagery and iconography
  6. Layout and composition
  7. Motion and interaction

Each element works together to make your brand instantly recognizable and meaningful.

Let's take a look at Gentle Monster for a moment.

Gentle Monster’s story is about challenging the norms of retail and eyewear.

Their philosophy values emotional experience over product selling, blending fashion, technology, and installation art.

From these values, their design language takes shape.

Conceptual, avant-garde, futuristic.

They build a surreal dream world with themes like robots, futuristic creatures, and distorted nature.

This design language shows up everywhere:

Their stores feel like art installations filled with kinetic sculptures and futuristic details.

Campaigns tell abstract stories about identity and transformation, not just products.

Typography and layouts are clean and spacious, creating cinematic tension.

Packaging is minimal and sculptural, making unboxing an experience.

Social media acts like a digital art gallery.

At its core, Gentle Monster’s design is a portal to another world.

You now have a basic understanding of the key pieces that make up the brand ecosystem.

But knowing them individually isn’t enough.

The real strength comes from seeing how they connect and work together as a complete system.

The Brand Ecosystem

“A system is never the sum of its parts, but the product of their interactions.”
— Donella Meadows

So, the total brand ecosystem is built on two core dimensions:

Internal — your Philosophy, Culture, and Psychology

External — your Brand Voice and Design Language

Your Brand Story acts as the bridge between them, translating internal meaning into external expression.

If you change something in the internal system, the external system has to adapt.

For example, when you gain new information about your target person, your way of communicating with them slightly changes.

Make sense, right?

But most brands stop there.

They overlook one crucial element.

It’s the difference between a static brand and a living system.

Between brands, people forget…

and brands that define industries.

I'm talking about:

The return loop.

A truly dynamic brand doesn't just express itself outward.

It listens, learns, and evolves inward.

Every external action creates a result.

That result feeds back into the system.

Refining, shaping, and deepening.

This is the loop that makes brands alive.

Action → Response → Reflection → Re-alignment → New Action

That's what allows your brand to naturally grow together with the cultural environment around it.

When you first build your brand, most decisions are based on intuition and educated guesses about what might work.

By installing this feedback loop, each cycle helps you refine that intuition with real-world data and insights.

At first, you create purely from instinct.

Now, you create from instinct plus the learnings from the cycle before.

Your brand evolves from a rough idea into a precise, living system.

Internal system → Brand story → External system → Audience Resonance → Refinement of Brand story, Internal and external System

So, the crucial missing piece is understanding how to create audience resonance in order to refine your brand.

That's what this last chapter is about:

Audience Resonance

Customer Surveys & Questionnaires

Surveys are structured tools to gather deep insights, not just on styles or colors, but values, aspirations, and how people feel about your brand.

This gives you a direct line into the minds of your audience, helping you shape not only your products, but your culture and communication.

Include questions that ask why they choose your brand, how it fits into their life, and what values matter to them.

Social Media Engagement & Listening

Social media isn’t just a content channel; it’s a live mirror that shows you how people see you.

Engagement (polls, questions, replies) and listening (comments, tags, sentiment) reveal how your brand lives in the culture.

Focus Groups & Customer Panels

In small, curated conversations, your audience tells you not just what they like, but why they connect (or don’t connect) with your brand’s world.

You uncover gaps between your internal brand story and the external perception.

These sessions are gold for aligning your philosophy, culture, and community.

Wear Trials & User Experience Testing

When people wear your products, they experience the full brand, from fabric and form to packaging, care instructions, and how it fits into their identity.

This reveals how your design language and brand philosophy translate into real life.

A product that looks good but feels off damages trust in your vision.

Send your pieces to 10 selected testers.

Include questions like:

Did this product reflect the feeling our brand gave you online?

Use the answers to align physical design with emotional expectation.

Feedback at Events or Points of Sale

Pop-ups and retail shows give you unfiltered reactions.

This is your chance to talk directly to people and notice their feelings when they step into your world.

That feeling shapes your brand culture.

The vibe, the music, the scent, the staff interaction, it all contributes to your identity.

Ask simple but revealing questions like:

What did you expect before coming in, and how did that change?

Let this guide not just your next event, but also how your brand shows up everywhere.

6. Conclusion – The Path to Iconicity

A brand is not a fixed identity — it's a living system.

It begins with a deep internal foundation:

your philosophy, your culture, your psychology.

It takes shape through external expression:

Your brand voice and design language.

And it connects the two through a compelling brand story that gives your audience something to feel, not just something to see.

But what sets truly enduring brands apart isn’t just clarity or aesthetics.

It’s the return loop.

Because the moment your message meets the world, it generates a response, and that response is your most valuable source of growth.

Without a return loop, your brand remains static:

a beautiful idea that slowly loses relevance.

With it, your brand becomes alive.

It listens, learns, and adapts.

Every reaction — from a DM, a survey response, a focus group insight, a social media comment, or a moment at a pop-up — is an invitation to reflect, refine, and re-align.

This is where Audience Resonance comes in.

It’s the toolset that turns your audience into co-authors of your brand.

Through thoughtful systems like surveys, wear trials, and social listening, you gain more than feedback — you gain truth.

Truth about how your brand fits into people’s lives, what it means to them, and what it could become.

So, as you build, don’t just express your brand outward.

Build the loop. Feed it. Learn from it.

Because that’s how your brand will not only grow, it will evolve.

Not away from its essence, but deeper into it.

More precise. More relevant. More alive.

Thanks for reading.

Fabio

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