Cheesy Fashion Choices

Food imagery in fashion has been a hot topic over the past few years, with the trend coming to a peak in 2024 and interest continuing into 2025. Licensed brand names are part of it, from Kate Spade’s M&Ms and Heinz ketchup bags to Huemn’s shirts, t-shirts, and hoodies with Lay’s. The idea is to add a bit of fun for consumers while generating awareness for both brands. 

One subsegment within this sphere consists of apparel, footwear, and accessories collections tied to cheese-related brands, which have popped up regularly as part of the broader trend. These initiatives tend to skew heavily toward novelty and are often very limited in nature, sometimes available only as contest giveaways rather than at retail: 

• Kraft Mac & Cheese paired with fine jeweler Ring Concierge in April of this year for a 14-karat gold maraconi necklace meant as a Mother’s Day gift. The Kraft Mac & Cheese x Ring Concierge Forever Macaroni Necklace was designed to capture the essence of the childhood craft of macaroni art, emulating a piece of elbow macaroni strung on a length of yarn. The product, which featured a 16-inch gold chain, was packaged in a Tiffany-like blue box, in this case royal blue with a yellow ribbon, duplicating the colors of the Mac & Cheese package. The necklace was sold through a dedicated online site, priced at $25, and was shipped with a box of classic Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. 

• Kerrygold partnered with a fellow Irish brand, Native Denims, in March of this year for a 500-pair limited edition of jeans featuring a “cheese pocket.” This is the little pocket often found within one of the two main pockets on the front of a pair of jeans. In this case, it was embroidered with a pattern of Irish buttercups and designated as a place to “carry gold”; specifically, a convenience-sized Kerrygold Dubliner or Aged Cheese Snack. In the launch materials, the partners noted that the collaboration “solves the age-old mystery, what is that extra little pocket in jeans really for?,” and added that in Irish folklore “cheese was hidden in clothing to fend off mischievous faeries.” Other features of the product included the Kerrygold name on a leather back patch and on a green back pocket tab. Cheese-loving consumers could enter to win a pair at a dedicated website. 

• Milkfarm, an artisanal cheese shop in Los Angeles, paired with Mokuyobi, an L.A.-based label founded by designer Julie Pinzur, in April 2024, for a Milkfarm American Cheese Bag line of purses that double as cooler bags. The products, which marked Milkfarm’s 10th anniversary, were made of double-insulated water-resistant nylon with embroidered and appliquéd details that emulate, in an unbranded way, the packaging typical of American cheese slices. Each purse is packaged in a close-fitting clear vinyl bag to give the sense of unwrapping a single serving, and each comes with a keychain featuring a plush slice of American cheese.  

• Cheetos paired with Puma in February 2024 for a line of sneakers across a variety of its models, all featuring orange as the dominant color, along with black and yellow, highlighted by cheetah prints; these are the colors featured on bags of Cheetos. One of the models, the Scoot Zeros x Cheetos, served as the first release in NBA player Scoot Henderson’s signature shoe line. The collection also included Chester Cheetah-inspired apparel in orange with cheetah-print accents, including a sherpa and pant duo, hoodie, several graphic t-shirts, and basketball-style dazzle shorts.   

• Kraft’s Velveeta brand paired with George the Jeweler in January 2024 for a limited-edition 14-carat gold Velveeta Drip Lip Cuff that takes its cues from the gooey drip of melted Velveeta. The drip imagery also ties into the fashion-industry sense of the word, signifying swagger and style. The brands were also tapping into the 2024 jewelry trends of face accents and liquified shapes. The piece retailed for $77 at George The Jeweler and continued Velveeta’s recent efforts to freshen its brand through unexpected collaborations, such as its Velvetini, a cheese martini, with BLT Restaurant Group in 2022.  

• Frito-Lay’s Cheetos Mac ’N Cheese paired with fashion designer Coral Castillo—known from her appearances on Stitched and Project Runway—for a line of macramé footwear and waist bags called MAC’ramé, in fall 2023. The knotted macramé pattern of the products, as well as the zipper on the bags, were inspired by the spiral noodles of Cheetos Mac ’N Cheese, and the orange, green, and red color palette was taken from the branding of the Bold & Cheesy, Cheesy Jalapeño, and Flamin’ Hot varieties of the Cheetos product. The shoes and bags were lined with a cheetah print, taking cues from the Cheetos mascot, who appears on the Mac ’N Cheese packaging. Like the Kerrygold example, these were available to consumers only through a contest. 

• The Laughing Cow (La Vache Qui Rit), a brand of Bel Group (Le Groupe Bel), paired with FLAN back in December 2021 for a limited-edition capsule of sportswear to mark the former brand’s 100th anniversary. The collection from FLAN, which is known for incorporating food imagery into its fashion offerings, encompassed five t-shirts, a vinyl hoodie, shorts, pants, fleece sweatpants, a polo jersey, and a soccer kit with the number 100. The pieces feature The Laughing Cow’s logo, with the FLAN logo featured on the cow mascot’s ear tag, along with blue diagonal stripes derived from the cheese’s packaging. FLAN stands for Forever Laughing At Nothing, which the partners said was a good fit with The Laughing Cow.  

Cheese-related brands have also been active players in food-to-food collaborations of late, such as when Kellanova paired with Palermo Villa earlier this month for a line of three frozen Cheez-It pizzas in Pepperoni and Cheddar, Italian Four Cheese, and Cheddar Jack Supreme. For more examples, see our previous posts on food-to-food partnerships involving cheese and mac and cheese brands.