Have we hit max saturation on brand collaborations?

...or are we just getting started? (A deep dive)

May 12, 2026

∙ Paid

You can’t open any social media app without seeing another — increasingly erratic and occasionally bizarre — brand collaboration announcement. This is leagues away from “Stella McCartney for H&M” or “Champion at Target.” (Though these do still count.) No, I’m talking about the niche 🤝 niche collaborations brought into this world with excessive because-we-can attitude. These are immoderate and indulgent, and they’re everywhere. Why?

A few particularly brilliant examples from recent years:

In a 2021 interview, Hessel Cohen of LoveShackFancy noted, “[Our collaborations are] not big money makers […]” So, why, then, do they continue to repopulate at the rate of rabbits and fruit flies?

This article is 3,753 words long. It covers five reasons brands love collaborations, five reasons consumers can’t get enough of them, and how to avoid a bad collab. It includes 59 examples of brand collaborations from the last decade, mostly post-2022 as well as appendices on celebrity and artist collabs.

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