Fashion needs to learn from football to take itself less seriously On TikTok, and offline too

The golden years of fashion on TikTok are over. Not when Jonathan Anderson left the creative directorship of Loewe, but when the maison's social media manager went out on his own. Meanwhile, the world's most famous football clubs have thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the world of brainrot and viral audio, tapping into the audience of the Chinese platform which, unlike Instagram or Facebook, has a particularly chaotic sense of humour. 

But why don't brands take a page from sports teams' social media managers to reinvent themselves on TikTok? Is taking yourself seriously really that important? 

The strategy behind Loewe's success on TikTok 

Loewe on TikTok has amassed nearly 2.5 million followers through a unique strategy. For years, the maison has collaborated with the most exuberant and niche internet personalities on self-deprecating videos that consistently rack up millions of views and interactions. When the content isn't signed by an external creator, Loewe experiments with viral sounds or popular formats such as ASMR, turning every post into a small, shareable comedy moment. 

On Substack, Rachel Karten had interviewed Lucas Yiu, Loewe's former social media manager and the man behind the brand's TikTok success. He managed the brand's social strategy for years before leaving the role at the end of 2025 to go independent as a creative consultant. In the interview, Yiu explains that in his view, «brands are struggling between heritage and social». They are too attached to their image and fail to understand that they need to become more relatable if they truly want to reach a young, unhinged audience like TikTok's. «What's the point of having a great beautiful campaign but no one is even seeing it?» the creator added. 

Where football comes in 

Sure, football is a sport with a far more visceral kind of engagement than luxury, and yet there are details in the social strategies of certain clubs — like Juventus or Napoli — that fashion could learn from. Using viral sounds is the most obvious example, as is creating niche formats that then get shared everywhere, capable of grabbing the attention of a Gen Z consumer who spends their day thinking about the Scuba Dance and dancing dogs. 

Judging by the 2.3 million likes Juventus managed to rack up with an ironic video about the «carrera de buses» and the over 12,000 comments calling for a pay rise for the club's social media manager — «el admin es latino si o si», one user writes — it would be worth it, even for haughty brands like Bottega Veneta, Prada or Chanel, to loosen up a little. «Audiences want marketing to feel real. They don't want it to be staged or polished», Yiu points out — someone who has built an entire career on relatability.