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We (by which, as always, I mean ‘I’) get a lot of questions about Fashion Week. Which brands made the biggest splash? Is Fashion Week even still moving the needle? And who was I wearing on the red carpet?
Well, we’ve got plenty of Fashion Week content coming, so don’t sashay away just yet. In the meantime, I thought it would be instructive to take a look back at recent developments in the world of Luxury Fashion. Let’s zoom out and see how the industry is doing, and answer those age-old questions: who’s winning, and why?
When we look at 2023’s Top 10 Luxury Fashion brands by EMV, the results, while solid, don’t exactly blow anyone away:
Top 10 Luxury Fashion Brands 2023 EMV Performance
For those of you who aren’t adept at mental-visual math, that nets out to an average 1% YoY growth for these brands, which is the closest you can get to not growing at all. So that seems to imply down times for the world of Luxury Fashion. But dig a little deeper and some success stories begin to pop up.
In fact, if we look at brands No. 11 to No. 20 on the list, we see a 13% YoY average growth, along with several brands that exceed the highwater-mark of 20% set by Hermès in the Top 10.
Olipop and Poppi YoY EMV Change 2023
That’s five brands—Tiffany & Co., Loewe, Miu Miu, Rolex, and Maison Margiela—that posted YoY growths that exceeded any Top 10 Luxury Fashion brand in 2023. And if you scroll down just a few more spots to No. 27 on our Luxury Fashion leaderboard, you’ll find a brand that blew past all of those brands, too:
Schiaparelli's High-Growth 2023 EMV Performance
So clearly these brands did something right in 2023. But do they have compelling growth stories over a longer period of time? By which I mean, of course, the most important question for this newsletter, or indeed for any newsletter: do they have cool graphs?
Here are the Luxury Fashion brands that stood out to me, and what they did to achieve their cool graphs:
Tiffany & Co.
An iconic name in both Luxury Fashion and Breakfast, Tiffany & Co. has emulated Nike in recent years—not only by building a powerhouse influencer marketing program, but by ‘swooshing’ its way to unprecedented heights. Take a look at this ✅:
Tiffany & Co. EMV Performance, 2018 - 2023
Somebody must have told Tiffany & Co. to ‘Just Do It.’ Well, message received.
After dipping in 2020—a dark time for Luxury Fashion, and therefore the world—Tiffany & Co. has rebounded every year since thanks to star power that few brands in the vertical can match. Among its top 10 EMV-drivers in 2023, the brand counted Gal Gadot, Florence Pugh, Gabrielle Union, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Michael B. Jordan. A 50% superstar rate amongst your biggest advocates is a pretty good number to hit.
These powerhouse brand partners leveraged their clout for a range of initiatives throughout 2023. In January, Tiffany & Co. launched its Tiffany Lock collection, which also saw heavy promotion in September surrounding Fashion Week. Hype for the jewelry offerings proved so strong that #TiffanyLock ranked as the brand’s No. 3 hashtag for 2023 at large, accruing $5.3M EMV and ranking behind just #TiffanyAndCo and #TiffanyPartner.
Related: Effective Marketing Is Creator-Led
Additionally, the stars aligned for the reopening of Tiffany & Co.’s landmark flagship store in New York. Throughout the year, the store played host to luminaries like Blake Lively, Barbara Palvin, Hailey Bieber, Katy Perry, and more. I can once again only assume that my invite was lost in the mail. Thanks to these initiatives, Tiffany & Co. saw $3.5M EMV from #TheTiffanyLandmark in April 2023, the brand’s highest monthly total for any hashtag.
Thanks to all these starry advocates, plus red-carpet shoutouts from Jenna Ortega, Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga, and more, Tiffany & Co. saw a whopping 64% of its 2023 EMV stem from powerhouse creators—an extremely high percentage, and proof that creators with large followings run the game for Luxury Fashion.
Loewe
Despite its name, Loewe enjoyed high growth in 2023, cementing a steady climb from $23.3M EMV in 2018 to $151.0M EMV last year—nearly a 550% improvement.
Loewe EMV Performance 2018 - 2023
Almost makes you want to go sledding, doesn’t it?
As with Tiffany & Co., the secret to Loewe’s success is fairly straightforward: dress the most popular people in the world in great clothes, and put the results on social media. The brand’s top three pieces of content by EMV in 2023 all came from Ariana Grande, with notable contributions from Gal Gadot and Mia Khalifa. So whatever else you want to say about Loewe, they draw from a pretty diverse set of industries.
In contrast to Tiffany & Co., Loewe garnered more coverage from publications, with these news outlets constituting a larger share of the brand’s top EMV-drivers:
Loewe Top EMV-Drivers Include Publications
In further contrast to Tiffany & Co., much of Loewe’s EMV stemmed from Fashion Weeks, rather than other initiatives. #PFW, #ParisFashionWeek, #FashionWeek, and #LoeweFW223 ranked as the brand’s No. 4, No. 5, No. 6, and No. 7 EMV-driving hashtags, ranging from $4.0M EMV to $2.4M EMV. Be sure to check out our 2024 Fashion Week coverage to see whether the brand maintained its momentum this year during fashion’s biggest season.
Maison Margiela
I want to show you something—a peek behind the curtain into the netherworld of Area51. (Not that one. I’m referring to the internal tool for CIQ data. A bit less cool, but also more practical.)
These are Maison Margiela’s top five EMV-driving posts in 2023:
CreatorIQ Data Overview of Maison Margiela Top Posts
Way to play combo-breaker there, Kris. Shockingly, here are Maison Margiela’s top 10 EMV-driving creators in 2023:
Maison Margiela's Top EMV-Drivers, including Kylie Jenner
Notice not only the wide margin by which Kylie Jenner ranks as Maison Margiela’s top earner—there’s greater distance between her and No. 2 than between No. 2 and No. 10—but the fact that she was new to the brand in 2023. And when you secure Kylie Jenner as your new top advocate, good things happen:
Maison Margiela EMV Performance 2018 - 2023
While Jenner was obviously key to Maison Margiela’s success, a funny thing happened on the way to my concluding paragraph: I ran the numbers and found that of 2023’s top 30 Luxury Fashion brands by EMV, Maison Margiela saw the lowest proportion of its EMV total stem from powerhouse creators. Whereas this tier was routinely generating 40-50% (and in some cases even 60%) of other brands’ EMV, powerhouses accounted for just 33% of Maison Margiela’s EMV, a sign that the brand relied on other tiers for success.
It’s also further evidence, as always, that there’s no one key to growth in the influencer marketing game. In Maison Margiela’s case, as with previous HBBIP spotlightee Viktor & Rolf, fragrance was a powerful force for EMV: four of the brand’s top 10 EMV-driving hashtags were fragrance-related with #SmellsLikeMemories collecting $4.2M EMV as Maison Margiela’s No. 2 hashtag in 2023.
Schiaparelli
Now comes our friend with the 103% YoY growth. What does that look like in chart form?
Schiaparelli EMV Performance 2018 - 2023
Neat. Well surely there will be a whole new strategy to account for this growth—something I haven’t already profiled in this very newsletter. I can’t wait to see what it—
Schiaparelli 2023 Top Posts, Dominated by Kylie Jenner
Oh. Well, those are only the top six posts. Maybe the rest—
The Kardashian/Jenners are Key to Schiaparelli's Social Media Success
I see. So after a break for Doja Cat and friends, we jump right back on the Kardashian/Jenner train (and there’s no stopping that train, believe me). Surely Kylie ranks as Schiaparelli’s No. 1 earner as well, right?
Schiaparelli's Top EMV-Drivers in 2023, including Vogue publications
Aha—another combo-breaker! It’s our old friends at Vogue. Another case demonstrating the vital symbiotic relationship between publications and fashion brands. There’s still plenty of love from the Kardashian-Jenners, though. That’s another symbiotic relationship of note. (Parasites are symbiotic, right?)
Like Maison Margiela, much of Schiaparelli’s success stemmed from Fashion Week initiatives, in addition to its starry advocates. Look no further than the brand’s top five 2023 hashtags:
Schiaparelli's Top Hashtags in 2023
There goes Doja Cat again. Never count her out.
Apart from the inner workings of Area51, what have we learned from these Luxury Fashion brands? First, Luxury Fashion itself is still booming in the right places, and there’s plenty of digital attention being paid to the vertical. Second, stars still sell: whether they come from the movies or the runways or the internet, this is *generally* (but not always, Maison Margiela) powerhouse territory. Finally, it bears repeating that whether you prefer Fragrance or Fashion Weeks, there are multiple paths to success—not just in Luxury Fashion, but in the Creator Economy at large. And who knows, maybe even in life itself.
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