Fashion world will be seen at Coachella

In 12 years, the three-day spring break for adults has become a branding juggernaut approaching Sundance Film Festival proportions.

Brands send clothes to celebrities ahead of time in hopes they will be photographed wearing them, distribute promotional items, and sponsor social events with the goal of generating traditional and social media coverage, and, eventually, sales. At the same time, design teams are there, studying the way festivalgoers dress so they can turn ideas around and sell them next year.

All this has developed around a festival initially conceived as an alternative to corporatized live music experiences with high ticket prices. And it is the idea of that indie spirit that makes Coachella so attractive to fashion brands such as H&M, Lacoste, Levi's, Havaianas and Ray-Ban.

"Coachella is underground, not rebel, but less mainstream than a traditional concert format," says Darin Skinner, Guess' senior vice president of stores, including G by Guess, the Guess brand's younger sibling. "That's how we see G by Guess. The front side of the herd, not the herd."

In one of the brand's biggest marketing initiatives of the year, G by Guess will be sponsoring a party for 750 to 1,000 guests at an 8 ½-acre estate in Indio, which boasts its own private lake and an airport. Skinner has also hired a "delta force" of models to ride around the festival on G by Guess-branded bikes, distributing 5,000 Coachella survival kit fanny packs.

Kate Bosworth, reality TV star Olivia Palermo and Kirsten Dunst are expected to attend the Mulberry BBQ and Pool Party, dressed in Mulberry styles, along with bloggers, stylists and editors from Teen Vogue, Style.com and other fashion media outlets. The British clothing and accessories brand also has a page on Mulberry.com devoted to "festival fashion," including flat sandals and the Edie bag with a guitar strap.

"People like to see celebrities being themselves, not just being photographed on an arrival board with logos in the back," says Vanessa Lunt, communications director for Mulberry, which has had synergy with the music industry for some time, booking up-and-coming bands for store openings and fashion week parties, and enlisting DJ Alexa Chung to design the popular "Alexa" bag.

For celebrities, the freebies start flowing even before they pack their bags, as clothing labels "seed" their products, hoping celebrities will be photographed wearing them. "People are paying a lot more attention to street style. And there is a lot of it at music festivals," says Ali Froley, a partner at the fashion public relations firm Bismarck Phillips in Los Angeles.