Formula 1's Fashion Flex

With the F1 season nearing its final races and Max Verstappen almost certain to be crowned World Champion for the 4th consecutive season, the competition might be predictable, but the sport is thriving. Liberty Media’s investment is paying off ten fold with increased revenue and over 70 million new fans across social media as it helps F1 appeal to a wider fan base. The impact of Drive to Survive has been well stated and covered before with other sports all now trying to replicate the success.  

As part of the Drive to Survive impact on F1's growth and broadening of the audience I’ve been interested in how fashion has capitalised on this as well as played its part in making the sport popular and driven its cultural credibility. 

LVMH recently announced they’ll enter a ten year partnership agreement worth an estimated $1 billion beginning in 2025, the sports 75th year. Chanel released an F1-inspired T-shirt that went viral and earlier this year A$AP Rocky’s first collection as Creative Director for PUMA’s F1 partnership sold out. Streetwear brands Awake NY, Palm Angels and The Sunday Collective have all released motorsport related drops and it’s now not uncommon for Hypebeast, Complex, Vogue and GQ to regularly report on the sports growing fashion and culture credentials. 

Lewis Hamilton Changes the Game

The beginning of F1’s fashion flex springing to life starts with one man, Lewis Hamilton. 

On the track, Hamilton made an instant impact with an almost debut Championship winning season and as he moves closer to two decades in the sport, he’s seen and played a part in the growth and popularity of the sport. His seven world championships in 18 seasons is matched only by Michael Schumacher and off the track, year by year he’s pushed against the preconceptions of how a racing driver should look and present themselves. 

Despite the sport’s glamour and drivers that looked like they’d walked off a GQ photoshoot like David Coulthard or Jenson Button, the sport always felt more classic and refined than youthful and energetic. Hamilton brought a new wave of self-expression and style.

Over the years we’ve seen the Dior ambassador’s style evolve and brands worn from LV to Prada, Rick Owens to classic British Burberry and the new generation of Wales Bonner and Martine Rose. You’ll see him at the British Fashion Awards and Met Gala, where he’s been chosen as one of the 2025 co-hosts. 

Between 2018 and 2020 he moved from wearer to designer, as he designed five collections for Tommy Hilfiger, who Hamilton is a brand ambassador of and they’re a brand heavily involved in F1 for decades, as well as a sponsor of Hamilton’s Mercedes team. 

In 2021, Hamilton launched his own clothing brand called +44, where he’s released three collections, including working with most Takashi Murakami. There’s still racing left in his career, but these moves in fashion show what his post-race career will involve.

In an interview with GQ in April he said “Honestly, one of my dreams is I have thought about creating my own diverse LVMH,” he says. “Like, I don’t know if we live in a time where that’s really possible. But that’s something that I’m conceptualising.”

While LVMH are now about to take a wider role with this deal, could Lewis be involved with the next incarnation of luxury house to be involved with the sport. If I was Bernard Arnault, I’d be making Hamilton one of my people to meet with.

The Luxury Set

F1 has always attracted a luxury consumer with the glamour of an F1 weekend more akin to a mini-festival for the high-net-worth set. The combination of high-octane sport, risk and threat of danger as well as a place to climb the social ladder attracts the entrepreneurs and social climbers wanting to be seen and make deals happen. Brands like Rolex, Hugo Boss, Johnny Walker and Rolex have all spent millions down the years looking to attract these people and associate with the sports glamour. 

In the Michael Schumacher, David Coulthard and Jenson Button era they would all regularly promote these brands and it was very much selling high end luxury and aspiration to people, through these debonair drivers. 

Now the Hamilton generation and Drive to Survive effect has broken down some of the walls and made the sport feel more accessible and inclusive. There’s still a long way to go but there is certainly a more energetic, youthful and diverse feel about the sport in the last few years than the previous generations with the average driver and fan age trending younger. 

F1’s fast growth has made it an attractive proposition for high fashion brands as they look to drive relevance and we see a shift to partner with more sport stars in ambassador roles and feature in campaigns. 

As we see a broader set of brands enter the sport and beyond the luxury fashion set, we’re seeing more streetwear brands enter. This would have been unthinkable in the 90s and as recent as the 2010s but in the streetwear-fication of everything era we’ve got a regular line of capsule collections and drops.

The Streetwear-fication of F1

Last year, Awake NY partnered with Tommy to create a capsule collection, modelled by Mercedes drivers George Russell and Hamilton, as well as featuring their numbers in a release mixing archive race looks with streetwear staples. The uptown and Americana world of Tommy, already ingrained in the 90s street aesthetic and Hip-Hop culture meeting the downtown coolness of Awake NY’s streetwear credentials would be an interesting collab at the best of times, but throw in the mix of motorsports as well and it’s one of the more eye raising and interesting collabs out there in the saturated world of collabs that we’re in now. 

Palm Angels have worked with Team Haas and really immersed themselves in the sport since joining in 2022, with founder Francesco Ragazzi being a big fan of F1 since childhood. Targeting key races in Miami and Las Vegas to launch a number of collections, they’ve included tees dedicated to the most iconic races of the Formula 1 Championship as well as the usual assortment of race jackets, sweatshirts and even trainers. 

Other notables that have caught the eye include team Alpine’s Kappa x Palace collection, launched at a Las Vegas Grand Prix pop up. Fusing sport and street style it had the usual array of tees and hoodies logo cross pollination but also some nice race jackets.  

Streetwear has been a natural bedfellow for skate and basketball culture with a recent rise across football. These are all sports that naturally come from, or have elements of street culture within them. It’s harder to make that link with F1 as even at a grassroots level it’s not an easy sport to move into. But maybe streetwear’s role in the cultural credibility of the sport and helping its awareness reach a broader set of people, it can help diversify the people who want to enter the sport.  

We’re already seeing a shift in the fanbase and the brands, but also who is making moves in the sport. None bigger than the appointment of A$AP Rocky to be Creative Director of their PUMA F1 partnership. 

Puma has a long heritage in F1 and also a great track record of partnering with talent in the world of sport and fashion and this appointment of the Harlem rapper and cultural icon could be a masterstroke for them. Tapping into his fashion, style, cultural and of course music credentials will help broaden the sports appeal further. 

The appointment isn’t one of those random Creative Director titles in name only, with hands-on input from the Harlem star so far. The releases from the partnership have been impressive and saw the return of the PUMA Inhale OG sneaker, originally launched in the 2000s, which Rocky personally chose from the archive. As well as the OG, the race jackets, tees, balaclavas and race gloves have all blended performance materials with function and fashion, making it a collection made for everyday wear. 

Spectacle or Sport?

For the purist, the concern that F1 is becoming more spectacle than sport has only intensified as part of the sports trajectory with brands and celebrities using the sports appeal to promote their agenda. The more people getting into the sport can only be a great thing, even if their way in was via a celebrity sharing grid walk pictures on social or a brand collaboration. 

The watch out though for Liberty Media is ensuring the purists and passionate fans who have been watching long before Netflix got involved, don’t suddenly feel alienated.

For the fashion brands increasing their presence and activity in F1, or new brands joining the party, they can’t just see this as a badging exercise. That may have worked in the previous eras of the sport but now more has to be brought to the table. What value can you bring to the whole spectrum of fans? 

It can be very easy for collabs to turn into formulaic brand x brand + racing jackets and tees = generic product that gains PR coverage in Hypebeast one day, but forgotten the next. 

With Max Verstappen’s dominance looking to continue into next season, we might not see changes to who takes the title until new regulations are brought into the sport in 2026, where race cars will be lighter and need to be more sustainable. Doubling down on the spectacle off the track in absence of unpredictability on it might grow the sport at the surface level, but what happens to the deeper levels of sport if more brands join to use F1 for their own means?  

At the luxury end, sport is increasingly becoming part of fashion brands strategies to reach younger and passionate audiences so more brands are going to want in on F1, the challenge for these brands is going beyond formulaic lines, drops and campaigns and finding ways to bring value and engage the whole spectrum of the sport.