IRNBY

IRNBY is a Russian sportswear and underwear brand founded by blogger Anastasia Mironova. At first glance, it appears to be a typical athleisure brand: seamless underwear, leggings, boxers, and fitness-inspired aesthetics. However, the brand’s visual system extends far beyond the product itself. Here, the body is not merely an illustration of the product—it becomes the product, the packaging, and the message simultaneously.

Shopping bags are designed in the shape of naked buttocks and breasts. Coffee cups imitate the textures of skin, veins, and body hair. Advertising campaigns feature nude male models carrying these bags as if they were barbells in a gym.

The analysis was conducted according to the principle of «from material to theory»: we first assembled a corpus of the brand’s visual and textual materials and then sought to determine which theoretical framework best explains this specific communication mechanism at work.

Craig’s semiotic tradition helps explain how the brand’s communication functions through predominantly visual elements and codes, how these elements are interpreted, and how they trigger audience responses.

The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) explains how audiences perceive both the communication and the product through the peripheral route of persuasion. Based on provocative visual imagery, the brand’s PR activities create a «wow effect» that overshadows the product’s actual rational qualities.

For a broad audience, IRNBY is a brand that operates through image recognition and emotional reaction rather than through persuasion based on product quality.

The same set of visual elements—the logо (the letter «I» resembling a dumbbell), skin textures, and bodily silhouettes—can trigger entirely different reactions depending on the context, ranging from a media firestorm to declarations that a campaign is a work of art.

According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model, the central route is associated with the rational processing of arguments and product characteristics, whereas the peripheral route relies on emotional responses to visual imagery, symbols, and contextual cues.

IRNBY does provide elements that could support central-route processing: fabric specifications, collection descriptions, information about garment fit, product codes etc. However, public communication is overwhelmingly dominated by the peripheral route. Even when the newsworthy occasion formally concerns the product itself, both media and audience reactions focus almost exclusively on peripheral signals and provocative imagery, while the product’s functional characteristics remain largely unnoticed.

By contrast, the ELM posits that attitudes formed through the central route are more resistant to change over time. In other words, they create long-term loyalty to the product itself rather than merely to the brand image.

Barthes described fashion as a mythological system in which clothing re-signifies the body. IRNBY goes one step further: its packaging literally reproduces bodily forms, becoming the very body that is expected to become more attractive, more disciplined, and better cared for through acquiring the product contained inside.

Body image becomes the central element of the brand’s entire sign system. Importantly, the brand does not refer to the body in general, but rather to a highly specific visual ideal that is continuously reproduced through advertising campaigns, packaging, and social media content. Within IRNBY’s communication, the body simultaneously functions as a goal, a value, and an object of constant improvement.

On the one hand, the brand promotes self-development and physical enhancement through its products. From a critical perspective, however, such communication reproduces a rather narrow conception of what a «proper» body should look like. As a result, the brand effectively addresses not all consumers but primarily those who are willing to identify themselves with this particular visual ideal. This creates a contradiction: while promoting self-improvement and bodily awareness, the brand simultaneously constructs a highly exclusive symbolic system in which certain appearances become more desirable and visible than others. Thus, the body becomes not only an object of representation but also a tool for the symbolic selection of audiences.

At the opening of the IRNBY café in Saint Petersburg, visitors were given their coffee in cup holders featuring illustrations of women with open mouths surrounding the opening intended for the coffee cup; the cup itself was decorated with a print resembling a human spine. Part of the audience interpreted the composition as overtly sexualized, triggering a wave of criticism on social media and subsequently in the press (vc.ru, Pod’yom, Afisha Daily, and Holod.media).

From a semiotic perspective, the case illustrates Barthes’s distinction between denotation and connotation. At the denotative level, the image shows a face and a curved cutout which, according to the brand, represents women practicing face fitness. At the connotative level, however, the same visual form was interpreted as sexualized.

The founder, Mironova, argued that body care is central to the brand’s identity and should include facial training, while alternative readings reflected the audience’s «active imagination.»

More importantly, according to Afisha Daily, the stories featuring the controversial cup holders were removed on the day of publication without explanation. Later, however, Mironova told Pod’yom that the stories had not been deleted but had simply disappeared after the standard twenty-four-hour period, and that the cup holders had sold out. This discrepancy reveals how the brand’s communication strategy benefited from the scandal: the initial silence and the later claim of commercial success represent two different communication approaches, with the latter appearing to be a retrospective response once the controversy had attracted significant attention.

From the perspective of ELM, the case demonstrates the peripheral route of persuasion. Audiences reacted emotionally to the visual image before considering the brand’s intended meaning. The central route was largely absent: discussions focused on the image and its interpretation rather than on the coffee, its price, or the cup’s functionality.

Regardless of whether reactions were positive or negative, the controversy generated media attention that a coffee cup alone would likely never have received. From the perspective of the press agentry model, even negative publicity ultimately functioned as effective PR.

On International Women’s Day, female customers visiting IRNBY stores were welcomed by nude male models holding bouquets of flowers.

Semiotically, the campaign inverts a familiar ritual. At the denotative level, it presents a traditional Women’s Day gesture: flowers as a gift from a man to a woman. At the connotative level, however, the male nude body itself becomes part of the gift, a decorative element within the showroom environment. This directly extends the brand’s established bodily code. In other words, the ritual of a man giving flowers to a woman is re-signified through the brand’s pre-existing symbolic equation: body = product = decoration

From the perspective of ELM, this is once again a purely peripheral technique: a situational and theatrical in-store experience designed to encourage customers to photograph and share the event on social media themselves.

This is arguably the most complex and multilayered of IRNBY’s campaigns and it cannot be reduced to a single communicative device, unlike Cases 1 and 2. Firstly, the Forever Young campaign semiotically extends the brand’s bodily code. The same logo that appears on packaging and cup holders is now transformed into a tattoo on the body of an elderly model. In its social media accounts, the brand explicitly cites Marilyn Minter’s photographic project «Elder Sex» — an exploration of sexuality and corporeality among people over the age of seventy—as a source of inspiration. Thus, IRNBY positions its campaign within an existing artistic and cultural conversation about aging bodies.

Secondly, the lookbook for the Arnold trousers (SS26) tells a story very different from those seen in the previous cases. At first glance, the product is basically striped athletic trousers inspired by vintage bodybuilding uniforms and the сharacter and image of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 80s and 90s. However, in the founder’s personal Instagram stories, the garment acquires a second, more intimate context. Mironova explains that she saw a photograph of a friend’s father wearing similar striped trousers and decided to recreate that exact pattern because her own father had worn similar trousers. According to her social media, they had often discussed recreating them because the original pair had been «worn down to the last thread.»

The story was accompanied by archival photographs: one showing the friend’s father as a young man wearing the trousers and another showing him years later.

Thirdly, the same trousers are featured on an elderly model in the campaign Sport is Sustainable, where she performs push-ups and balances in yoga poses under the slogan «Muscle is the New Botox, ” demonstrating that fitness and confidence in one’s body are not limited by age.

Viewed through a semiotic lens, the same object—the striped trousers—simultaneously functions a: аn element of the brand’s recognizable bodily code, referencing bodybuilding culture; а personal family symbol operating through nostalgia; а symbol of physical capability at any age, positioning the campaign within broader cultural discussions surrounding aging and the body.

The promotion of the product and trousers themselves therefore do not carry a single fixed meaning; rather, they function as an intentionally multilayered symbol capable of engaging different audiences on different levels. From an ELM perspective, the campaign still relies primarily on peripheral processing. However, unlike the shocking or overtly sexual bodily imagery used in previous cases, this campaign operates through nostalgia, familiarity, and the increasingly prominent media discussion surrounding the normalization of aging bodies.

Communication with professional audiences differs significantly from communication with ordinary consumers. How does the brand organize its interactions with media outlets, influencers, and the broader information environment in such a way that provocative imagery consistently generates publications, discussions, and media exposure?

Provocative products become newsworthy events in and of themselves. Moreover, provocation is explicitly embedded within the brand’s stated values, as emphasized through visual manifestos and social media communication, for example manifesto featured in promotional materials for the IRNBY SPORT collection: «constant self-improvement of moral, mental and physical qualities. Emphasized grace, cultural provocation and sexuality.»

A distinctive feature of this strategy is that the brand rarely follows a traditional PR model. Instead of engaging with media organizations and press in advance, provocative products are launched without detailed explanations or commentary. Journalists, Telegram channels, and news outlets independently discover the new object of discussion and begin disseminating information about it. Only after media coverage has emerged

In most companies, the owner, ambassador, and press office are usually different people, or different groups of people. At IRNBY, these functions are largely consolidated in the figure of Anastasia Mironova. Although the company undoubtedly employs a professional communications team, Mironova’s personal account simultaneously serves as the of the brand’s image, one of its primary communication channels, and a platform for official statements. Announcements of new collections, responses to criticism, and explanations of controversial decisions are communicated directly through the founder, bypassing the traditional sequence of: brand → press office → media

IRNBY’s collaborations serve not only a product-related function but also a media function. A particularly illustrative example is the collaboration with Ksenia Sobchak— Horse Drop. In a way Sobchak is a certain media herself: she possesses her own audience, YouTube channel, and status as a newsmaker.

Collaborating with her allows IRNBY to move beyond the field of fashion media and enter the realms of political commentary and entertainment journalism, that would not normally cover sportswear but are eager to cover Sobchak. The campaign’s concept of «post-meta-irony”—transforming the long-standing meme that „Sobchak looks like a horse“ into the foundation of the collection—also functions as a powerful media hook. Journalists and bloggers can easily build stories around the collaboration because it relies on an already established cultural reference. This makes it particularly suitable for publication, discussion, and reposting.

Audience comments beneath social media posts included: „Ideas like this will never be within AI’s capabilities. It’s so cutting-edge that the style and self-irony are almost painful.“; „This is simply genius.“; „Ksenia is in her prime. What a president we lost.“; „When my children ask me what art is, I will show them these photos.“

Thus, collaborations at IRNBY function less as product initiatives than as mechanisms of media distribution. Each collaboration temporarily allows the brand to occupy the audience and info space of its media partner.

Ultimately, IRNBY illustrates how contemporary brand communication increasingly operates not through the transmission of product information but through the production of cultural meanings. In this context, the body becomes simultaneously a symbol, a platform, a commodity, and a message.