Journal · Fashion & sound
Music for fashion: scoring films, campaigns, and runway shows
Fashion spent a century perfecting how it looks and the last decade discovering how it sounds. Gucci has commissioned a film composer to score a runway like cinema. Dior has put Max Richter and live musicians in the room. The fashion film - a genre that barely existed twenty years ago - now premieres like cinema and travels like music. This is the new reality of the industry I scored my way into through a film for Jacquemus: fashion has become a storytelling medium, and stories need scores.
Fashion’s cinematic turn
The shift is easy to date by its symptoms. Houses that once treated show music as a playlist now credit composers the way films credit them. Frédéric Sanchez turned “sound illustration” for Prada, Margiela, and Miu Miu into a recognized discipline. Gucci brought in Justin Hurwitz - an Oscar-winning film composer - to write a bespoke score that turned a collection into a narrative. Dior staged Max Richter live in 2022, and music supervisors now sit inside the fashion calendar the way they sit inside film studios. Why the turn? Because fashion’s product stopped being only clothes. It is worlds - and a world without sound is a showroom. The houses that grasped this treat music as part of the collection: composed, fitted, and finished to the same standard as the garments.
Scoring the fashion film
The fashion film is the purest scoring challenge I know, for one structural reason: there is almost never dialogue. The entire narrative arc - who she is, what she wants, what the morning means - has to live in music and image alone. When Jacquemus commissioned the film for the IFM Paris showcase, the brief began, disarmingly, as “elevator music,” and became the score for a woman moving through a sleepless night toward the moment she finally steps outside with her purse. Boredom, longing, quiet thrill: every beat of that arc was carried by the music, because nothing else could carry it. That is the discipline in miniature - scoring emotion, not scenes, with the added couture constraint of restraint: the music must make the audience feel the world of the house without ever upstaging the product it exists to serve.
The runway is a fifteen-minute film
A show soundtrack is the season’s thesis statement, delivered once, live, to the exact room that will decide how the collection is understood - then replayed for weeks in every clip that leaves that room. The physics matter: live strings in a hall create an intimacy no playback rig can fake, which is why the orchestral gesture keeps returning at the top of the market. But the structure matters more. A great show soundtrack is built like a trailer for a world: an opening that resets the room, a build that carries thirty looks without monotony, and a final walk that lands like a chorus. It is composed to the choreography the way film music is composed to picture - and it deserves better than being outsourced to a playlist the night before, a point I make at length in the role of music in luxury branding.
Campaigns and the sonic wardrobe
Between the films and the shows sits the everyday reality of fashion marketing: campaigns, social cutdowns, in-store worlds, brand films. This is where a house needs not a track but a wardrobe - a set of musical pieces cut from the same cloth, recognizably one voice across every placement. For the luxury heel house TARO ISHIDA, I wrote three tracks for one campaign world: the strike (the product itself as rhythm - the kick drum is a recording of their heel hitting the floor), the atmosphere (a bed the visuals can breathe over), and the voice (a choral piece carrying the house’s Italian grace). Three garments, one collection. That is what separates fashion brands with music from fashion brands with a sound - the difference explained in full in the sonic branding guide.
What a house should actually commission
If you sit on the brand side, the practical checklist is short. Own, don’t rent: a licensed song borrows someone else’s identity, expires, and can resurface under a competitor; commissioned music is exclusively yours and compounds season over season. Commission DNA, not a track: brief the composer on the house - its materials, its rooms, its woman or man - and ask for a musical idea that can be re-tailored across a film, a show, and a six-second social cut. Fit the film like a garment: music written to your edit, with the final note landing on your final image, not a track your editor had to cut around. And plan the deliverables like a collection: film master, show edit, campaign cutdowns, stems for future re-tailoring. The houses that work this way stop paying for music every season - they invest in a sound once, and wear it for years.
Frequently asked questions
Who makes the music for fashion shows?
A mix of specialist sound illustrators and music directors, DJs, and increasingly commissioned composers - from Justin Hurwitz scoring for Gucci to Max Richter performing live at Dior. The clear trend at the top of the market is toward original, owned music.
Should a fashion film use licensed songs or a custom score?
Licensed songs buy borrowed recognition, are non-exclusive, and expire with the license. A custom score is written to the film’s arc, is exclusively the house’s, and can seed a sonic identity that carries across seasons. For brand-defining films, custom almost always wins.
How long does it take to score a fashion film?
A single fashion film cue typically takes one to three weeks from brief to final master, including an emotional sign-off on the piano sketch before production. Show soundtracks and campaign suites scale with scope.
What does campaign music cost compared to licensing?
Licensing one known song for a major campaign often runs six figures and expires. Commissioned music is scoped on length, production, and rights - frequently less than a single license, for music the house owns exclusively.