MILAN — At a time of sluggish fashion sales and low consumer confidence, the large crowd in line outside Nude Project’s new pop-up store in Miami earlier this month could come across as unexpected.
However, the Spanish fashion brand — somewhat of an outsider — has found a good recipe for luring young customers in store. Most of its success lies in its ability to connect with its actual and prospective audiences, coupled with an accessible price point.
Established in 2018 by cofounders Bruno Casanovas and Alex Benlloch, the Barcelona-based streetwear brand shows no sign of fatigue as its community of Gen Z — and increasingly Gen Alpha — types continue to flock to the stores and e-commerce sites craving for more chances to buy into the brand’s lifestyle proposition.
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In the span of seven years, the direct-to-consumer brand — which offers unfussy men’s and women’s apparel and accessories with street credibility — has expanded its footprint and currently counts nine flagships in Spain, Italy and Amsterdam.
This month it has opened the first retail outpost in the U.S., a two-week-long, test-and-try, pop-up space in Miami’s Design District, on NE 41st Street, surrounded by high-end and luxury brands such as Brunello Cucinelli, Loewe, Balenciaga and Golden Goose.
The brand’s journey started pre-pandemic.
“I was naive and trying to find a way for myself, but I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. I felt like I had a lot of energy. I was very excited about life, but I had just come out of school, and I was not very talented at anything,” creative director Casanovas said about the beginnings in an interview at the brand’s Milan flagship, its first outside Spain that opened in 2023, days before heading to the U.S. for the Miami pop-up opening.
“I was very much into lifestyle fashion. But more than lifestyle fashion, I just loved humans. I love connecting. I love psychology and the human brain,” Casanovas said.
When he and Benlloch, who serves as chief executive officer, connected over social media and then met in person, the latter’s background and interest in the e-commerce business seemed a good fit, so they teamed up to establish Nude Project.
The 1,400-square-foot pop-up in Miami reflects the brand’s retail blueprint with its Mediterranean-flavored interior decked in ivory concrete and a tall tree doubling as a bench standing at the center of the space.
The brand’s debut Stateside reflects its brisk online business in the country, which currently represents the second largest e-commerce market, following Spain, Casanovas said. Italy is its third biggest market.
The activation will culminate this week to coincide with Billboard’s Latin Music Week, which runs through Friday and features artists across disciplines, spanning music and visual arts, performing at the store.
As part of the American trip, Casanovas decamped for a few days to New York to shoot images for the brand’s latest drop, called “Business as Unusual,” his take on corporate attire: very few suits and a lot of preppy infused garb. While in town he squeezed in a dinner with Maluma, one of the many celebrities who have embraced the brand.
Nude Project is not the only fashion brand leveraging the connection with its audience via IRL in-store experiences, yet its resonance seems particularly effective.
“I don’t know [what it is]. Two years ago, I felt like Nude Project’s identity was not so clear, and I [kept thinking] ‘If we don’t have a clear identity, it means we’re not doing a good job.’ And then I kind of realized that maybe this is our superpower, that Nude Project is not a lifestyle brand, but it’s an attitude brand,” Casanovas explained. “It’s about a way of seeing the world. It doesn’t matter [who you are] if you can relate to the way we see the world — which is about having fun, about connecting, about being playful, about never losing that inner child — all the many things we stand for.”
He added that Nude Project “is for the misfits, for people that don’t really belong anywhere. I think we always speak to that kid who maybe doesn’t feel understood by the people around him. I feel like they finally found a brand, or store and space where they feel free to be themselves.”
The creative director finds time often to visit the stores and connect with people organically. “If I have some free days, I’ll try to spend them at the store, sitting down and just seeing how people interact. I try to spend time with the community in the most normal way possible,” he said.
That explains why Nude Project’s retail strategy is paramount to the brand, as it aims to keep nurturing the relationship with its clients.
“The next goal for the band — that is so culturally relevant or so connected with the community — is to start creating not stores but temples, places where the community really wants to hang out,” Casanovas said. “Maybe there needs to be food and beverage, maybe padel courts. The next crop of stores we are working on are going to be extremely experiential and they’re going to be much bigger,” he said, pointing to the recently opened, three-story flagship in Amsterdam or its Madrid unit.
“We just feel that those stores are getting more drive because people want to connect,” he said.
Casanovas declined to provide figures for 2024, but with sales in 2023 hitting 26 million euros, Nude Project could be a lucrative M&A target. But Casanovas is not planning to sell stakes anytime soon.
“I value freedom like nothing else,” he said. “Never say never, because I’m still as naive as I was when I was 19. I’m only 25 now, and as much as I don’t like people who say they’d never do something, because we always change, but definitely [selling] is not in our plans right now.
“If I’m building a project that is the reflection of my personality, it would be very weird if I sold it when I’m in the purest stage of expressing [its ethos]. I finally have more things to say to the world than when I was 19 and barely knew anything, so it would feel very contradictory to what we’re doing right now,” he noted.
Casanovas’ use of the brand as a platform for self-expression has clearly grabbed attention among his Gen Z peers.
“Fashion is so cool because it’s like a walking billboard. I feel like the most important decision you make in the day is probably how you dress. It’s what gives you confidence. For me, fashion should be an expression, an extension of yourself. So, when doing fashion, I feel like we have a big responsibility for what messages we want to deliver. The brand is an outlook of how I feel about the world, and I’m trying to make fashion fun. I want the clothes, what we do in marketing and everything to be a vivid representation of that,” he said.
Casanovas and Benlloch are plotting a continued, healthy expansion.
“We keep growing, and we grow, honestly, faster than I would like to. Because at the end of the day, I feel like fashion is one of the few industries where selling more doesn’t mean being cooler, sometimes it’s even the opposite: the niche brands are oftentimes cooler,” Casanovas said. “The plan is to always keep growing but the most important goal is to always preserve the brand equity,” he said.
