Fashion’s relationship with F1 is also shifting into reverse, seeing the racetrack hit the runway rather than the other way around. See Ferrari, who made their debut at Milan Fashion Week last year with fifty-two looks (one for each lap of Silverstone, by chance). Designed by Armani alumnus Rocco Iannone, it saw a venomous snake palette of red, yellows and blacks applied to racing jackets, asymmetric suiting and intarsia knits. “Fashion is a great way to reach a bigger audience and make the brand relevant to people’s lifestyles,” Iannone said in a statement after the show. “But the quality of the products has to align with our values.”
This quality is also seen in the sport’s ambassadors. Here lies part of the reason for the trend’s breakneck growth: F1 drivers have never been so fashionable. Enter Sir Lewis Hamilton, the kind of hypebeast who struggles when asked for just three favourite designers (“Virgil, Isabel Marant, Martine Rose”) and is regularly pitted against others in ‘fit comparisons. He’s been an ambassador for Tommy Hilfiger since 2018 and last month became a poster boy for Valentino, starring in the fashion house’s “DI.VAs” campaign and writing his reflections on ”love” in the windows of their flagship stores. Hamilton also led a recent campaign to overrule the F1’s ban on jewellery, which is so intrinsic to his performance he risked being banned from races by defying the new restrictions.
Others might not have sponsorships yet, but they’re being clocked: Daniel Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly, Esteban Ocon, George Russell and Lando Norris all featured in a Vanity Fair editorial backing Netflix smash Drive to Survive, pushing their current fashion sensibilities to new levels with hot pink jumpsuits and Hermès scarves. And if we’re putting our money on who’ll land a deal next, it’s Chinese superstar Zhou Guanyu, who boasts an enviable collection of shoes and discerning taste.
There’s a reason it’s high – not high street – fashion that interests F1 drivers and vice versa: Formula 1 is pure luxury. If cult US novelist Tom Wolfe was right that cars represent “freedom, style, sex, power, motion, colour… everything”, then really fast, flash ones elevate this further. Single-day tickets for F1 cost $100 at a minimum, with Paddock Club packages going well beyond $3,000 for multiple days; F1 cars themselves cost $12m and the UK will be forking out £19m on the weekend just for rights to host the race. If you want to watch F1 or even drive yourself (for a cool $8m), you have to have a lot of money. That’s unsurprisingly the kind of consumer high fashion likes.
While we never wave our flag for this kind of excessive exclusivity, it’s hard not to be a little intrigued by F1’s foray into fashion. There is something irresistibly, almost gaudily sexy about F1, from its appearances on runways to its new team of red-hot ambassadors.
And, hey, it’s not the worst kind of fast fashion out there.
