Fashion influencers lead the industry

Influ­encers have final­ly infil­trat­ed the most elite cir­cles of the fash­ion com­mu­ni­ty. When four social media-born star­lets graced the red car­pet of the Met Gala – a char­i­ty-fundrais­ing pageant host­ed by New York’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s Cos­tume Insti­tute – this year, a sig­nif­i­cant thresh­old was crossed.

Atten­dance for the event is strict­ly vet­ted. For James Charles, the 19-year-old make-up artist and beau­ty blog­ger known for his ultra-high def­i­n­i­tion looks, it was no less than “a step for­ward in the right direc­tion for influ­encer rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the media”.

Influencer collaborations prove lucrative

Like all influ­encer col­lab­o­ra­tions, a spon­sor­ship deal had made the appear­ance pos­si­ble. Cami­la Coel­ho (7.9 mil­lion Insta­gram fol­low­ers) attend­ed as a guest of the wom­enswear design­er Diane von Fursten­berg, and YouTu­bers James Charles (15.3 mil­lion fol­low­ers), Liza Koshy (17.8 mil­lion fol­low­ers) and Lil­ly Singh (8.8 mil­lion fol­low­ers) were invit­ed by YouTube.

YouTube, owned by Google, bought sev­er­al tables at this year’s Met Gala, as the com­pa­ny vies to estab­lish itself as a con­vinc­ing plat­form for the fash­ion indus­try. In the past it has strug­gled to lure fash­ion fol­low­ers from Insta­gram but this year attract­ed big names such as Alexa Chung, Nao­mi Camp­bell and Vic­to­ria Beck­ham, who all set up their own chan­nels.

For a long time mar­keters and brands have talked about ‘authen­tic­i­ty’, but per­haps a more accu­rate mea­sure of an indi­vid­u­al’s abil­i­ty to influ­ence is cred­i­bil­i­ty

With the val­ue of the influ­encer econ­o­my pre­dict­ed to stretch to between $5 bil­lion and $10 bil­lion in terms of glob­al adver­tis­ing spend by 2022, accord­ing to Busi­ness Insid­er Intel­li­gence, the takeover almost seems com­plete. Cen­tu­ry-old fash­ion hous­es and online-only brands found­ed this week are able to find a niche influ­encer to act as a liv­ing brand ambas­sador.

Navigating the busy influencer market

The ubiq­ui­ty of influ­encers, the sat­u­ra­tion of social plat­forms with “spon­sored con­tent”, and con­sumers’ scep­ti­cism over man­u­fac­tured con­tent makes the ter­rain for fash­ion brands more dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate. For a long time mar­keters and brands have talked about “authen­tic­i­ty”, but per­haps a more accu­rate mea­sure of an indi­vid­u­al’s abil­i­ty to influ­ence is cred­i­bil­i­ty.

Emi­ly Jane John­ston, who runs the blog Fash­ion Foie Gras and could be con­sid­ered an ‘influ­encer vet­er­an’, hav­ing start­ed blog­ging in 2008 when Insta­gram was a niche plat­form for pho­tog­ra­phers, recalls how Lon­don had six fash­ion blog­gers who would be tak­en to PR paid-for events to pop­u­late their posts. Now, there are lit­er­al­ly thou­sands.

That Ama­zon, the apex of mass con­sumerism, is to launch a lim­it­ed edi­tion col­lec­tion designed by glob­al influ­encers in col­lab­o­ra­tion with The Drop to go live inter­na­tion­al­ly for 30 hours only, is a sign that influ­encers are now an inte­gral part not just of mar­ket­ing and sales, but also prod­uct devel­op­ment.

Like weight-class­es in box­ing, influ­encers’ clout is divid­ed into var­i­ous leagues: nano-influ­encers (800 to 10,000 fol­low­ers), micro-influ­encers (10,000 to 50,000), macro-influ­encers (100,000 to one mil­lion) and ultra-influ­encers (more than one mil­lion). In the­o­ry, there is an influ­encer suit­able for every brand’s stature, price point and bud­get.

Indeed, a report from the online streetwear mag­a­zine Hype­Beast found that only a third of streetwear enthu­si­asts sur­veyed con­sid­ered social media influ­encers the most cred­i­ble fig­ures in streetwear. The large sur­vey of near­ly 41,000 con­sumers around the world found that musi­cians, indus­try insid­ers and con­tem­po­rary artists were con­sid­ered most influ­en­tial. Their cred­i­bil­i­ty came well ahead of social media influ­encers, celebri­ties and ath­letes.

We are already see­ing influ­encers emerge who aren’t sole, full-time social media fig­ures, but are also mea­sured by their suc­cess in what­ev­er indus­try they work in, be it inte­ri­or design, beau­ty, art, fash­ion, sport or even gar­den­ing, and that cred­i­bil­i­ty makes them the right influ­encers for fash­ion brands look­ing to add sub­stance and wider cul­tur­al clout to their brand.

Recent­ly, much talk has been made around micro-influ­encers. Some new fash­ion brands have built their busi­ness strat­e­gy entire­ly around a select few influ­encers and a high­ly tar­get­ed Insta­gram mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Budapest-based Nanush­ka, which was hard­ly known two years ago, is now car­ried by Net-a-Porter and Far­fetch fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful tar­get­ed Insta­gram cam­paign and Insta­gram endorse­ments from fash­ion styl­ist @monikh and blog­ger @songofstyle.

Commercial partnerships build influence

Influ­encers are also deep­en­ing their com­mer­cial ties to brands direct­ly. Lean­dra Medine, the founder of the online fash­ion blog-cum-mag­a­zine Man Repeller, has report­ed­ly invest­ed in the young direct-to-con­sumer activewear brand Out­door Voic­es and under­wear brand Live­ly and offers con­sul­ta­tion ser­vices to fash­ion brands.

Oth­ers are rewrit­ing their con­tracts to swap retain­ers for equi­ty. Lifestyle blog­ger Arielle Char­nas owns a sin­gle-dig­it per­cent­age stake in Bandi­er and fre­quent­ly men­tions the retail­er in her Insta­gram sto­ries and posts. She reports that she has no agreed con­tract on how often she should men­tion the retail­er, allow­ing her endorse­ments to appear nat­ur­al.

Accord­ing to indus­try pub­li­ca­tion, Busi­ness of Fash­ion, fash­ion influ­encers have tak­en inspi­ra­tion from the enter­tain­ment indus­try, where estab­lished actors and musi­cians have grad­u­at­ed from sim­ply star­ring in films or being “repped” by a record com­pa­ny, to run­ning their own pro­duc­tion hous­es and stu­dios that allow them cre­ative and finan­cial con­trol, while invest­ing in new tal­ent.

Suc­cess­ful fash­ion influ­encers, who have only ever earned their keep through social media and paid-for con­tent, aren’t just pret­ty faces with great self-styling skills, but often also astute busi­ness peo­ple. Many have a keen sense of the inside work­ings of the indus­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly its finan­cial levers, and are con­tin­u­ing to chal­lenge the sta­tus quote when it comes to fash­ion mar­ket­ing.