How UGG Bought Its Way Back to Relevance

There are two primary ways to wear UGGs. There’s the way Alessandra Ambrosio wore them last March: strolling to her car in the ankle-length boot, with a hoodie pulled over her face. And then there’s the way fashion writer Yu Masui wore UGGs at London Men’s Fashion Week this month: a thigh-high version of the shoe, paired with a Christopher Kane “Sex” T-shirt and a Doublet leopard-print coat. That is to say, an Instagram-friendly, perhaps ironic style that makes UGGs look more right at home next to a pair of YEEZYs during fashion week.

The latter is precisely how UGG would like to be seen in 2019: as at once an instantly recognizable classic and a provocative fashion statement. Like Masui’s look suggests, UGG has decided it can not only be sexy,cheap bape clothing
but also fit right in with coveted streetwear brands. No longer Oprah’s Favorite Thing, the brand wants to be Heron Preston’s “favorite thing.” Can it be done? With the right combination of collaborations and endorsements, maybe — or at least, for now.
The Collaboration Trick

“We talk California lifestyle. We don’t talk cold weather boot,” Andrea O’Donnell, President of Fashion Lifestyle at Deckers, told HYPEBEAST of UGG’s new modus operandi. When O’Donnell joined UGG’s parent company Deckers in 2016, UGG’s marketing was focused entirely on functionality. Owing to her experience in luxury, O’Donnell knew that UGG needed to connect with customers on an emotional rather than practical level. “We’ve become known as a cold weather sheepskin brand, and nobody feels that sexy in cold weather,” she says. “How do we connect back to that story when it was first embraced in a very romantic and emotional way?”

Anyone who follows fashion will know the answer: a combination of getting UGG boots on the Paris runways, tapping streetwear brands to slap their labels on UGGs, ensuring influential figures are photographed wearing those styles and spending ad dollars on bold campaigns. “One of the reasons we were excited about the collaborations was it would enable us to get awareness for that kind of street consumer faster than we could ordinarily do,” O’Donnell says.

"“How do we connect back to that story when it was first embraced in a very romantic and emotional way?”"

Evidence of that strategy first emerged in August 2017, when Jeremy Scott presented a limited-edition collection of UGGs in Paris. (“My assistant met someone from Ugg’s p.r., in normal life, no work appointment, and they were, like, ‘Oh God, Jeremy loves Uggs!’ and the Ugg person was, like, ‘Really?’ And it all happened from there because I’m obsessed with wearing them,” Scott told WWD of the collaboration process.) The styles failed to generate big Fashion Moments (unless you count a Hadid family Christmas snap over a year later).