There’s never a shortage of attention-seekers at New York Fashion Week, but in terms of the designers who are attracting the most social media engagement, Michael Kors took the top prize.
With more than 4 million click-based actions – likes, reactions, shares and comments – Kors clearly led the field. Coach was second with 805,263, followed by Tory Buch with 678,716, Thom Browne with 582,952 and Dion Lee with 409,425.
RELATED: Front row at Michael Kors RTW Fall 2023
One of the reasons Kors was able to garner so much attention was its celebrity-studded front row. K-pop star Dayhun, Kate Hudson, Katie Holmes, Lily Aldridge, KiKi Layne, Gloria Steinem, Lea Michele, Ella Hunt, Maddie and Rachel Ziegler, Lisa Rinna, Ellen Pompeo, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Alan Cumming were among them participate.
A collaborative effort with South Korean rapper and musician Dayhun topped the charts with more than 1 million engagements, beating all other brands. The same image of her in a cut-out black dress generated nearly 67,000 engagements on Twitter, the highest of any NYFW show-related content on the platform this season. A Kors-annotated video highlighting the fall collection’s inspiration — empowering women and how style icons Steinem, Tina Turner, Yoko Ono, and Jane Fonda influenced him growing up — was the second-biggest contributor for the company. Other high profile content included catwalk shows, high profile guests and front row influencers who were among the 300+ viewers.
RELATED: Lil Nas X and Ice Spice share ‘secrets’ in the trainer’s front row
While designers and brands are maximizing social media across NYFW, they also understand that who they invite to their runway shows can help immensely in how many others get a peek at what they’re showing on their runways. Each brand’s engagement score was based on the click-based actions taken in direct response to a brand’s social accounts or through organic conversation, including new fans and engagements on social media and conversation volume on Twitter and Reddit, according to ListenFirst, the company behind the study.
Instagram has been the primary medium of choice for New York-based brands during NYFW, particularly for video content. However, Xiaoman Chen, fashion and luxury customer strategist at ListenFirst, found that non-video posts generated an average of 88 percent more engagement than video across all platforms, “suggesting that non-video posts are still very effective for show-related content is.”
Ice Spice and Lil Nas X at Coach. Lexie Moreland/WWD
The runner-up coach seemed to get the message that animal-friendly content, or anything food-related, generates traffic on social media. (On average, people post about their pets twice a week.) The brand’s animal and fruit-shaped handbags drew significant engagement on Instagram. A post featuring a banana-shaped Coach bag had 24,758 interactions, and a fish-shaped bag was also a strong performer. However, Coach’s top post was a video of rapper Ice Spice discussing her house party essentials. (The musician was a familiar face front-of-the-house during NYFW, popping up at multiple shows and parties.) Ice Spice outdid herself for Coach by posting a chat with Lil Nas X at the show, which ended up being Coach’s second most important contribution.
Tory Burch – who launched e-commerce in 2004 – has held her own in terms of social media engagement this season with a guest list of over 400 people. Tory Burch’s top-performing post was a collaboration with “Dance Moms” Maddie Ziegler, in which she highlighted her Tory Burch attire and shared a video of the runway show from her perspective. The designer label’s second top post was a short ASMR backstage video of Emily Ratajkowski, whose Instagram followers total 29.7 million. The brand’s social media engagement was also boosted by catwalk-related content, Tory Burch’s rewear challenge for Vogue, Anna Wintour sharing her favorite thing about Burch via TikTok, and the signing of South Korean actress Park Eun Bin as the new brand ambassador strengthened.
Claire Foy, Suki Waterhouse, Claudia Sulewski and Maddie Ziegler at Tory Burch. Nina Westervelt/WWD
As unexpected as a crashed biplane was as a catwalk prop at the Thom Browne show at The Shed – not to mention the imaginative and dramatic collection inspired by ‘The Little Prince’ – it was one of the designer’s notable guests who sparked social media. A video of K-pop star Johnny Suh from South Korean group NCT 127 arriving at the venue was the company’s most engaging entry.
Thom Browne RTW Fall 2023 Giovanni Giannoni/WWD
Second-half ranks sixth through tenth consisted of Area with 283,667, Carolina Herrera with 281,523, A-Company with 205,372, Proenza Schouler with 74,807 and LaQuan Smith with 59,757.
RELATED: Teyana Taylor Applauds Black Excellence Front Row at LaQuan Smith
