How brands created buzz in 2023, and what’s next

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The convergence of fashion and entertainment, the power of the destination show and the rise and rise of APAC influencers: the industry’s standout moments of 2023 reveal just what drove the most conversation this year — and where fashion will go in the next.

“Brands’ narratives go more and more beyond the product. The goal for labels is to create preferences and this can be achieved through entertainment and experiences,” says Serge Carreira, director of emerging brands initiative at Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode and lecturer at Sciences Po. To be sure, destination shows offer the advantage of combining runway collections with Instagrammable experiences.

Numbers also confirm the firepower of the big brands. According to influencer marketing platform Lefty, in the top 15 shows of the year, only one is a small brand (Schiaparelli SS24) and the leading show by an emerging brand in terms of earned media value (EMV, the amount of advertising spend required to achieve the same number of impressions), is Ottolinger SS24, with $3.2 million, way behind the top 15 shows of the year by big brands (all above $30 million). Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton and Sabato de Sarno at Gucci were the top designer debuts, well ahead of debuts from Peter Do at Helmut Lang and Peter Hawkings at Tom Ford.

Fashion meets entertainment

Williams’s debut for Louis Vuitton won 2023: the star-studded show that included a performance by Jay-Z, garnered $42 million in media impact value (MIV, which assigns a monetary amount to every post, interaction and article) for the men’s collection, exceeding the largest women’s fashion shows for the first time, according to tech and social media analytics provider Launchmetrics.

“Pharrell’s show was the winner because of a combination of the three key factors of success: a large amount of influencers (top three), highly engaged (top one in number of posts) and powerful (top two in average EMV per post),” says Annika Baer, Lefty’s marketing manager.

Barbiecore was another craze that dominated fashion this year. The film generated over $474 million in MIV in July alone, surpassing major fashion weeks, says Alison Bringé, chief marketing officer at Launchmetrics. Brands stood to benefit from the Barbie effect: during the month of July, when the film was released, Birkenstock garnered $34.1 million in MIV, up 28 per cent on the month prior.