House DNA

The fundamental design characteristics of a (fashion) brand.

Reporting on Paris Fashion Week for Agence France-Presse, Sarah Shard noted:

At the just-ended Paris ready-to-wear collections, the buzz word was “house DNA,” or what makes a label distinctive.

The chief buyer for the Paris department store Printemps, Aymeric de Beco, said he had been struck by the “insistence at all the shows on the house’s genetic code.”

“I think that’s also what the consumers are looking for, to go back to the basics of a brand.”