Fashion Week buzz: Paris, Milan, K-Pop stars, red boots and Dior set people talking

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Mar 9, 2023

With the dust starting to settle on the frantic round of fashion weeks this year, it’s interesting to see what really made an impact both on and off the runways. UK-headquartered global consumer intelligence company Brandwatch has analysed the the online conversations around the Big Four AW 23 fashion weeks, plus Paris haute couture and the men’s shows, and found that Paris and Milan garnered the most attention — a lot more — compared to London and New York.

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Looking at the volume of online conversations gathered from public posts, blogs, forums and news sites between 1 January and 6 March showed that Paris and Milan were the clear winners and those additional men’s and couture events being brought into the data really helped boost the overall profile of those cities.

Milan’s mentions ran close to a million while Paris topped 1.2 million, with London and New York in the low hundreds of thousands.

THE K-POP FACTOR 

Part of the attention focused on Paris and Milan was down to the celebrities who attended the shows with K-Pop stars being the dominant focus.

Celebs attending shows in the first few months of the year and who were talked about online included Jeno (443,000+ mentions), J-Hope (263.6k), Jimin (240k), TEN (221k), Jeonghan (97.5k), Suga (94.6k), Hoshi (74k), Jisoo (73k), Enhypen (38k), and Doja Cat (31k).

Except for rapper Doja Cat in 10th place, all of the celebrities listed in the top 10 ranking are K-pop stars. Jeno, part of the Korean boy group NCT, has been busy this fashion season, attending both New York and Milan Fashion Weeks.

And that drew fans to talk about the shows who might otherwise have ignored them, something that won't be lost on designer brands as they plan their future marketing budgets.

RED ALERT

On the trend front, Brandwatch said that the colour red was also a big talking point on and off the runway, with Doja Cat attracting a lot of attention.

Her appearance at Schiaparelli's Paris haute couture show covered head-to-toe in red and in 30,000 meticulously placed red Swarovski crystals was a real moment online.

It’s also interesting that across the shows in January, February and early March, Brandwatch’s image analysis tool revealed that 46% of the images posted around the fashion weeks that contained the colour red were of dresses and 32% were of red shoes — perhaps suggesting an important consumer trend direction for 2023 as a whole.

It also noted that during New York Fashion Week, celebrities and influencers were spotted wearing red rubber boots shaped like the boots of the animé character Astro Boy. The art collective behind the Astro Boy-inspired boots, MSCHF, used NYFW to promote their boots ahead of their February 16 release date. Those boots went viral and sold out in minutes.

BRAND POWER

As for the big runway brands, Dior was “by far the most talked about fashion brand during the fashion weeks”.

Brandwatch said its “clever ambassador strategy ensured [it] was talked about far and wide, and with high-profile K-pop stars Jimin of BTS and Jisoo of Blackpink, it's no wonder that the luxury brand managed to take the spot at the top of the rankings”.

Another Blackpink singer, Rose, is now an ambassador for Yves Saint Laurent and her appearance at the last of the AW23 fashion weeks, Paris, created a lot of buzz. 

Saint Laurent was in second place behind Dior in terms of total conversations, with Ferragamo in third place. Behind them were Valentino, Prada, Loewe, Bottega Veneta, Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Burberry.

What did the top 10 have in common? All of the fashion brands have collaborated with K-pop stars, with Brandwatch predicting more collaborations to come as brands increasingly appreciate the importance of this particular group of famous faces.