Can’t pronounce Hermès? Duolingo has something you can wear

Duolingo is taking on one of fashion’s trickier problems this New York Fashion Week (NYFW): knowing how to pronounce the names on the label.

The language learning platform has launched "The phonetic collection", a fashion campaign and capsule collection that turns the often-confusing pronunciation of designer names into wearable lessons.

The campaign is rooted in research conducted by Duolingo and YouGov, which found a gap between how confidently people say fashion names and whether they are actually pronouncing them correctly. According to the study, 62% of respondents said they were confident they could pronounce Hermès, but only 15% did so correctly. Meanwhile, Jacquemus emerged as the fashion name respondents felt least confident pronouncing.

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To play on that disconnect, Duolingo teamed up with designer and Next in Fashion alum Megan O’Cain to create a capsule collection featuring phonetic spellings of designer names across recognisable fashion silhouettes.

The collection takes familiar references from fashion and reconstructs them through exaggerated proportions, playful typography and O’Cain's signature curved silhouettes. Spanning tailoring, sportswear and accessories, the pieces largely adopt a monochrome palette while incorporating Duolingo's characteristic sense of humour.

According to Duolingo, the collection is designed as a playful lesson in engaging with fashion, helping wearers decode its references and learn the language surrounding the industry.

At its core, the campaign draws a parallel between fashion and learning a new language, where familiar things can suddenly feel unfamiliar when people do not understand the codes, terminology or references surrounding them. Rather than treating that lack of knowledge as a barrier, Duolingo is positioning the process of figuring it out as part of the experience.

"The phonetic collection" launched on 8 September with campaign imagery and OOH placements across New York City, followed by a two-day pop-up on 9 and 10 September. Visitors can view the collection and bid their Duolingo streaks, rather than money, for a chance to take pieces home, extending one of the platform's signature engagement mechanics into the physical activation.

Fashion's pronunciation problem is not entirely new territory for brands. Loewe previously leaned into longstanding confusion over its own name with "Decades of confusion", a 2024 campaign starring Dan Levy and Aubrey Plaza that poked fun at the many ways consumers have attempted to pronounce the Spanish fashion house's name.

For Duolingo, however, the confusion offers an opportunity to take its language-learning proposition outside the app and into fashion culture, turning the anxiety of saying the wrong thing into the central creative device of its NYFW play.

More recently, fashion weeks have also become a playground for brands outside the category to tap into wider cultural conversations. Closer to home, beauty brand LUX took the internet's fascination with the "final fit" to Singapore's first Orchard Road Fashion Week as part of its ongoing "#LUXMyWill" campaign.

Building on the #BuryMeInThis social media trend, LUX approached attendees with the question: "Would you be caught dead in this? And I mean, literally." The activation took the online conversation offline, asking fashion week attendees whether the outfits they wore that night were also looks they would want to be remembered in.

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