MCM’s Dirk Schönberger on maintaining 'a glimpse of heritage’ as the brand evolves

Out with the old and in with the ... old? In June 2021, MCM unveiled a novel, but old-school logo for the first time in its 45 year history. Although the new take on the iconic Visetos print signifies the brand’s evolution, the vintage-inspired Italian jacquard fabric is meant to convey MCM’s past in step with the ever-changing fashion industry. 

“Heritage creates so much emotion for [the] consumer,” said Dirk Schönberger, global creative director of MCM, on this week’s Glossy Podcast. 

Still, MCM knows adapting is a constant in fashion. Its computer-generated take on the logo and its choice of non-leather fabrics demonstrate the brand’s ongoing need for change.

“If you look closer, you see the cubes that we have are consisting of the diamonds from our original logo,” he said, referring to MCM’s new Cubic Monogram, part of the second phase of the brand’s refresh that launched on October 4.

In addition to the updated logos, Schönberger has facilitated MCM’s collaborations with Gen-Z heavyweights like Billie Eilish, for example, who starred in the brand’s fall/winter 2019 campaign. 

Below are additional highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity.

Luxury fashion’s "ivory towers"

“Luxury fashion has changed because of the influence of street and sportswear. That had a major influence. That's why I'm saying Adidas was also fashion, but it was a different kind of fashion. And you could say that luxury fashion’s ivory towers [are] crumbling because of the influence of street and sportswear. But if you see, then, how luxurious the sportswear has become, maybe the ivory tower just got a little bit higher. Because now even the democratic pieces are exclusive and expensive. I wouldn't say that the ivory tower is crumbling, [but] it created little, extra towers that are also growing … With the influence of street and sportswear, it brought luxury fashion into a completely different space. It was not this rich, mature consumer all of a sudden, but it was again, the youth culture that influenced fashion.”

A pandemic reset  

“How we reacted [in the last two years] was, we focused, we were super concentrated, it was not panic mode. It was, ‘Okay, let's have a good look at ourselves, what could we improve from [the] product, from [the] size of [the] collection?’ The whole sustainability topic became even more important than it was already before. There were a lot of serious conversations, but they were always directed to the future. It was not, ‘How are we going to save the company?’ But it was, ‘What do we need to do to be a better brand once this is over?’ And this is what we've done and I'm proud of all the teams that have been working as if nothing has happened from home. And we still managed to do business as usual. And at the end, we came out as a more sustainable company, a more focused company. It forced us to cut off things that were not as necessary as we thought they would be.