Bananas, Baby: The LA Launch That Ate the Internet
Retail’s new religion, brought to you by Jacquemus (a masterclass in storytelling and spectacle).
No one does it better than Simon. A designer who’s launched as many think pieces as he has impractically pint-sized bags into the fashion ether, his surrealist world continues to blur the line between fashion, art and fantasy. Suffice it to say, we’re here for it. Exhibit A: his recent banana-themed arrival in Los Angeles, which, FYI, we’re still talking about ad nauseam and have zero plans to stop.
The Launch Was… Bananas
In case you literally take up residence underneath a rock: the Jacquemus boutique launch on Melrose was a banana-studded spectacle for the ages. Marking a seismic shift in how luxury retail moves through culture, the brand’s touchdown was engineered to travel fast online and linger offline for years to come — no doubt it will be studied in history books in years to come. Featuring a giant banana on wheels and a Provençal flower stand, the store was designed to feel more like a curated mood than a commercial space.
Jacquemus pulled off what most luxury brands still struggle to: relevance without force, playfulness without dilution and product embedded in atmosphere.
Retail as Storytelling
Founded in 2009, Jacquemus has always approached retail with the razor-sharp, whimsically imaginative instincts of a storyteller. The L.A. launch reinforced a now-signature strategy: creating physical spaces that feel less like stores and more like brand episodes. Less transactional, more immersive. The Melrose boutique operates not as a typical retail space but as a portal into the Jacquemus worldview: sun-kissed, referential and always satisfyingly surreal. The Banana Car, a Jacquemus-branded convertible cruising down Melrose, got heads turning the world over. But it was far from a gimmick. The motif reappeared at the flower stand, inside the store and across digital touchpoints. A visual through-line that turned charm into cohesion, delivering maximum cultural cut-through with minimal media spend. Brilliant, as per.
The Local Lens
Inside, the store speaks fluent L.A.: a “wellness” corner with branded yoga mats and chrome dumbbells taps directly into the city’s health culture. The casting, if you can call it that, felt equally native. Anwar Hadid and Cole Sprouse appeared not as hired talent but as natural extensions of the brand’s social gravity, reminding us mere mortals once more that the brand doesn’t orchestrate fame, it merely lets it orbit.
Crucially, the brand resisted over-explaining the experience. No manifesto. No gamification. No funnel. Just emotional architecture, resulting in a space that makes you feel something before asking you to buy anything.
Cinematic Logic
This instinct to translate rather than transplant is what sets Jacquemus apart in global expansion. Los Angeles wasn’t a departure from Provence, it was a continuation. From the cherry-red runway slicing through Versailles to the AI-generated Bomba campaign or La Casa, inspired by Godard’s Le Mépris, Jacquemus doesn’t just reference culture, he re-authors it. He stages familiar tropes through his own cinematic logic, whether drawing from French New Wave cinema or casting a White Lotus character in his latest campaign.
The inclusion of Jon Gries (or ‘Greg/Gary’ as all of us who have donated weeks of our lives to binging White Lotus will know him) landed with chef’s kiss precision. The villain, captured in various states of dress alongside bananas, wasn’t merely a cameo but a continuation of Jacquemus’ ongoing exploration of generational tension, irony and nostalgia. The reference felt natural, not opportunistic — perfectly timed with the cultural momentum around The White Lotus finale and reflective of the brand’s deeper relationship with narrative construction.
Cultural Velocity Over Conversion
This sits in sharp contrast to a luxury industry still optimising for KPIs and quarterly reports. No, Jacquemus is optimising for cultural velocity instead. The brand creates scenes worth circulating and trusts the internet to do the rest. He gets the memo: In 2025, brand equity isn’t just about what you sell, it’s how you move through the world, and how you make people feel.
The L.A. launch didn’t mimic the city, it moved through it. And just like that, Jacquemus turned a store into a story, a car into a campaign and a banana into a brand asset. Tell us that’s not genius. We’ll wait.
Subscribe to Public Opinion for more brand truth bombs, spicy takes, and inside-baseball strategy that actually moves the needle.
Public Opinion is where we talk. Smack Bang is where we do. Come see what we’ve been building →smackbang.co