By IN MID-FEBRUARY, the great and the good of Formula 1 arrived at London’s O2 arena for an event entirely new to the highest class of international motorsport racing: F1 75 Live. Ostensibly a season launch centred around introducing the cars and drivers set to line up on the grid throughout the championship’s 75th anniversary season, the event was, in reality, the F1’s grandest marketing exercise yet: an Oscars-like showcase for a revitalised and increasingly image-conscious sport. Celebrities mingled with drivers on the red carpet, each cohort styled to the nines, before settling down at tables for a formal presentation as a live crowd of 20,000 watched on – the teams took turns presenting their 2025 contenders in an elaborate stage show. It was motorsport’s answer to a blockbuster film premiere, with shades of the Met Gala and The Hunger Games’ tribute ceremony thrown in for good measure – viewed online by a YouTube audience of more than a million people.
Placed strategically throughout the festivities were nods to the most valuable sponsorship deal Formula 1 has ever signed: a billion-dollar, decade-long agreement that will see luxury conglomerate LVMH imprint its own image, and branding, on the sport’s races and teams. For LVMH, which is owned by the Arnault family, the deal marks the next phase of a wider shift: to place the company at the epicentre of the Venn diagram where sport and luxury converge. For F1 owners Liberty Media, who bought the group in 2017, it represents the culmination of eight years reviving a series that had lost both a considerable amount of viewers and, through a combination of mismanagement, scandal and economic headwinds, much of the glamour of its late-20th century heyday.
As the drivers watched the showcase play out, conspicuously opting for water over champagne (it was pre-season, after all), bottles of LVMH-owned Moët & Chandon sat proudly in ice buckets perched on each table. When F1 CEO Stefano Domincali addressed attendees and viewers at home in a vignette, a cool blue timepiece from TAG Heuer, which this year replaced Rolex as the sport’s official timekeeper, twinkled on his wrist. A leather-clad Louis Vuitton trophy trunk, adorned in the fashion house’s signature monogram and holding the World Championship Drivers’ Trophy, dominated the frame behind him. ‘Victory Travels in Louis Vuitton’, a plinth holding the trunk boldly declared.
This year, the first stop on that trunk’s 10-month, 24-race voyage is the Australian Grand Prix – a milestone event not just as Melbourne returns to its traditional role as the setting of the season opener, but as the first major branding experiment of this eye-catching new partnership. Incidentally, after decades aligned with Australian legacy brands like Qantas and Fosters, it’s now named the Louis Vuitton Australian Grand Prix – the first time a fashion house has ever served as the title sponsor of a Grand Prix.
Such a convergence of two cultural powerhouses was unsurprising for anyone who’s kept tabs on the growing interplay between professional sport and luxury fashion. Invigorated by a young, vocal wave of fans who discovered the sport during COVID, shortly after season two of Netflix series Drive to Survive hit the small screen, F1 has become central to a growing discourse wherein athletes have become sources of both style and sporting inspiration. Just as NBA and NFL entrance tunnels are unofficial catwalks, so too now is the Formula 1 paddock, which becomes a flex parade on a near-weekly basis throughout the season, enshrining figures like Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc among a new pantheon of sartorial icons.
“F1 has spent years taking a much-needed look at what it takes to create an aspirational brand in the 21st century,” Lily Herman, author of the popular F1 culture newsletter Engine Failure, tells us. “That means leaning into these splashier partnerships and taking cues from other sports leagues that have command of their existing audiences while expanding to new demographics. F1 hasn’t consistently done all of that successfully but it’s certainly doing leaps and bounds better than it was just a few short years ago.”
The F1 partnership isn’t the first time LVMH has used its significant cultural cachet (and cheque book) to place its brands in front of the sporting fanbase, which is one of the greatest mass audiences. The conglomerate has also inked deals with the NBA, FIFA World Cup and, most prominently, last year’s Paris Olympic Games. F1, a sport rekindling its relationship with the hyper wealthy while being long associated with many of the brands already in the company’s stable, is a savvy next step.
“It’s worth remembering that many of the recent sponsors we’ve seen in F1 have been centred around the tech and finance space,” says Herman, adding that the sport also has long standing links to companies in the fossil fuel industry. “Keeping in mind that history, but there’s [still] a lot of intrigue from younger fans around this deal. The Louis Vuitton angle is obviously the one getting the most play right now since so many consumers recognise the logo, but there’s definitely interest surrounding what’s to come in the future from other [LVMH] brands.”
BEING SEEN at the Grand Prix is as cool as it gets - the new SPRING RACING BIRDCAGE, if you will
F1’s move into the luxury space presents an interesting paradox for the younger fans Herman speaks of – many of whom have brought a distinct sense of social justice to the sport’s burgeoning fandom. It’s curious that this same crowd, one that rails so vocally against the institutional elitism long endemic to F1, has readily embraced the sport’s fashion-forward makeover.
“There’s a lot to unpack here,” says Herman when I put this to her. “First, I’d say that F1 has a history of being glacial and unresponsive to the changing world, so you get a lot of excitement when something comes along that seems remotely in touch with current cultural trends – [including] a luxury brand.
“These industries – most particularly, fashion – impact every single person on a daily basis. Clothes are a language that everybody speaks in some form or another. We all express something with what we wear. Seeing an advert for a well-known fashion label at a Grand Prix automatically [feels] much more tangible and accessible to the average person than, say, a partnership with an obscure tech consultancy or a dubious cryptocurrency. I don’t think a desire for inclusivity and an interest in fashion and luxury have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, bringing these elements into the conversation can actually bridge gaps between different groups of people.”
That Melbourne was chosen as the host of F1’s first ‘fashion’ grand prix is no real shock given the city’s long-held reputation as Australia’s unofficial capital of sport, culture and cool – yet to watch clips of Australian GPs of decades past is to see just how much the vibe of the event has transformed in the space of a few short years. Having spent a long time stuck in a mire of lukewarm interest and below-par crowd numbers, the Grand Prix stands proud once again as one of the most celebrated events in Australian sport.
“The growth has been extraordinary,” muses Australian Grand Prix Corporation CEO Travis Auld. A former AFL executive, Auld took over the organisation of the race last year, telling The Age that his aspiration was to make the Australian GP the largest in the world – a festival of motorsport held on a city-wide scale. To that end, it appears well on its way. Attendances across the weekend have swelled by more than 100,000 since the race’s return from a two-year pandemic hiatus. Almost half a million punters are slated to return to Albert Park this year in what’s almost certain to be another sellout.
“For Louis Vuitton to select us as their first naming rights partner in F1 is the ultimate nod to how the race and its fans have grown,” Auld says. “It’s not a responsibility we take lightly.”
To WATCH CLIPS of past Australian GP's is to see how much the VIBE of the event has TRANSFORMED
Yet perhaps more spectacular has been the race’s cultural metamorphosis. Younger viewers and foreign fans, many having taken to the sport only recently, have vivified an event that previously presented as a noisy, expensive weekend out for cashed-up families and petrolheads. As such, Melbourne now enjoys a reputation as the first stop on the F1 calendar with a truly ‘global’ feel – and a weekend-long party to match.
Auld notes the sweeping demographic changes that have taken place across Albert Park in recent years: 43 per cent of attendees last year were women – significantly higher than the global average. Younger families from a wider array of demographics are also becoming increasingly common. Likewise, the week leading up the race has become a citywide festival of activations, branded events and driver appearances. Wednesday night’s Glamour on the Grid party, a red carpet event that was, just a few years ago, considered a footnote on the wider weekend, now sits alongside the NGV Gala and Australian Fashion Week as one of the hottest tickets on the nation’s social calendar. More than 700 highpowered names in entertainment, sport and business attended last year; another 600 were rumoured to be sat on the waitlist in the hope of scoring an invite. “I think I get as many invite requests for Glamour on the Grid now as I do for the race itself,” notes Auld.
In many ways, the renewed focus on the Grand Prix as a cultural spectacle feels emblematic of a wider seachange in what Australians, and young people in particular, perceive as aspirational. The cost-of-living crisis may be curbing consumer spending, but the next generation still wants to feel involved in the fashion zeitgeist; following a sport that’s aligned with the world’s hottest brands is one way to do so.
Being seen at the Grand Prix is, for the foreseeable future, about as cool as it gets – the new spring racing carnival Birdcage, if you will. And this year, the allure of activations and hospitality from LVMH’s stable of luxury brands will no doubt burnish the spectacle’s appeal even more.
All of this raises the question: how should the Australian GP position itself, as F1’s shift into the luxury space – and pursuit of the luxury consumer – continues with the DRS turned on?
Already, the addition of new street races in places like Miami, Las Vegas and Saudi Arabia has stratified the calendar into two distinct types of Grand Prix: destination races attended almost exclusively by the rich and powerful, and more egalitarian events – Melbourne included – that are doing what they can to remain as approachable as possible, so as to appeal to new fans without ostracising the old.
Even with its flashy new partner, Auld remains positive that the Australian GP can remain all things to all people as it continues to grow: a space where Champagne, slushies and beer flow with equal abandon, depending on what you’re into.
“I think what’s clear is each event has its own personality and proposition,” he says. “We need to stick to what we’ve become famous for, and that’s an incredible festival, in a park, on the doorstep of a city. We know how much the drivers and teams love it, and we know how much the fans love it. We have an opportunity that not many other places have.”
This story appears in the March/April issue of Esquire Australia, on sale March 13. Find out where to buy the issue here.
