Skip to main content

Fashion Week isn’t about models anymore — it’s about the influencers

Charli D'Amelio at Milan Fashion Week
TikTok megastar Charli D’Amelio at Milan Fashion Week Vittorio Zunino Celotto / Getty Images for Prada

The most viral moment of Milan Fashion Week last year was when Italian designer Donatella Versace stoked the nostalgia of the internet. She arranged for iconic ’90s-era models, including Shalom Harlow and Stephanie Seymour, to walk down the runway, in turn creating a calculated social media event.  

Recommended Videos

This year, the fashion industry seems to be trying another strategy.

Instead of mining beloved memories, fashion houses like Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Celine are hoping 15-year-old TikTok star Charli D’Amelio, YouTube sensation Emma Chamberlain, and “e-boy” dreamboat Noen Eubanks will be the ticket to attracting younger audiences to luxury brands. 

On Thursday, D’Amelio posted four videos to TikTok for her 28 million followers from the Prada show in Milan with the caption “@prada #prada.” Collectively, the posts had over 30 million views (and counting) as of Thursday afternoonAnd according to The Cut, she sat next to Derek Blasberg, a veteran fashion journalist and head of fashion partnerships at YouTube. 

Other influencers seen this past month in New York City, London, and Milan include vlogger Margot Lee, singer Loren Gray, and others from the HypeHouse collective, a group of TikTok stars who live together in a Los Angeles mansion, including Chase Hudson.

COME TO MILAN WITH ME

New York Fashion Week, which took place at the beginning of February, saw a partnership between TikTok and IMG, the company that produces the weeklong event. IMG’s Leslie Russo told Business of Fashion the collaboration was completely unpaid, but meant to “heighten mobile reach and social media relevance.”

Fashion’s relationship with technology, and the digital space in general, has been a tricky one so far. Both sides have tried to make partnerships work in the past that have just fallen flat. It’s not like tech CEOs are known for their wide range of attire, either. And the interest in wearables among fashion elites took a nosedive after Burberry alum Angela Ahrendts left Apple. Plus, some luxury fashion houses are still not active on Instagram, a platform known for its profitable relationships with big brands, which has made some investors anxious

But that doesn’t mean the space is not lucrative.

Move over, magazines

Emma Chamberlain Is Speechless After the Latest Louis Vuitton Show | LOUIS VUITTON

In the last year, creators across YouTube and TikTok, with millions of followers and built-in audiences, scored some serious fashion cash — a trend experts are only expecting to grow in coming years. 

“If any fashion brand wants their company to sustain and stay influential for years to come, they have to be present where people spend most of their time, which is on social media,” Marienor Madrilejo, an agent in the digital media, licensing and branding division for the Abrams Artist Agency, told Digital Trends in a statement. “The best way to do so is to tap the influencers who dominate conversations that happen online.”

TikTok is largely popular among teenagers and has rapidly accumulated more than a billion users and more than 700 million downloads across the globe. On Wednesday, it introduced parental controls

Avani Gregg, another member of Hype House, and Karen Yeung, both represented by Abrams, are expected to attend shows in Milan and Paris in the coming week. 

There’s more: Chamberlain and the Dolan twins (known from their popularity on the now-defunct Vine app) have partnered with French luxury label Louis Vuitton to create exclusive content for the brand on its YouTube channel. The deal naturally comes with tickets to the runway show, so catch them posting on social next week in Paris. 

Last month, Dolce & Gabbana teamed up with Hudson and other TikTok stars like Gianmarco Rottaro, Marta Losito, Marco Cellucci, and the Baker brothers in Milan for Men’s Fashion Week to announce the brand’s plan to join the platform soon, according to an Instagram post

And then this past December, Celine tapped Eubanks, who has nearly 10 million followers on TikTok, to be the face of its latest campaign, solidifying the power young internet stars have on very real financial capital. 

“Gen Z is starting to age up and their buying power is growing,” said Madrilejo. “The fashion houses are realizing that digital is a burgeoning, new ecosystem that they need to conquer outside of the traditional media outlets.”

Exclusive: See Inside The 'Hype House' Mansion For TikTok Creators | TODAY

The static collaboration between fashion houses and Instagram influencers has certainly lost its shine in comparison. The younger generation of content creators are on all platforms, and even though they are known individually, they are also part of large communities of digital-savvy teens with millions of followers dedicated to their every movement. This gives them the ability to make every moment a viral one. 

So, going all-in on creators like Chamberlain and D’Amelio is clearly a no brainer for brands eyeing a slice of their social media prowess. So front-row photographers better start learning their names. 

Meira Gebel
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Meira Gebel is a freelance reporter based in Portland. She writes about tech, social media, and internet culture for Digital…
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Reddit just achieved something for the first time in its 20-year history
The Reddit logo.

Reddit’s on a roll. The social media platform has just turned a profit for the first time in its 20-year history, and now boasts a record 97.2 million daily active users, marking a year-over-year increase of 47%. A few times during the quarter, the figure topped 100 million, which Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders had been a “long-standing milestone” for the site.

The company, which went public in March, announced the news in its third-quarter earnings results on Tuesday.

Read more
Worried about the TikTok ban? This is how it might look on your phone
TikTok splash screen on an Android phone.

The US Supreme Court has decided to uphold a law that would see TikTok banned in the country on January 19. Now, the platform has issued an official statement, confirming that it will indeed shut down unless it gets some emergency relief from the outgoing president.

“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” said the company soon after the court’s verdict.
So, what does going dark mean?
So, far, there is no official statement on what exactly TikTok means by “going dark.” There is a lot of speculation out there on how exactly the app or website will look once TikTok shutters in the US.

Read more