Page 9 - Demo

Fashion Week works
Today, fashion shows are not only photographed for social media, but they are also live-streamed so anyone sitting at home in front of their computer can tune in. Fashion shows have now evolved into marketing spectacles directed towards a mass audience. Hundreds of thousands attend fashion week, but thanks to today’s digital world, millions of people live-stream fashion shows online. So the purpose of fashion week seems clear; capture the attention of as many people as possible; visibility leads to sales, right?
Well, the answer to that question is that it matters only to a degree. In reality, the equation is not so straightforward and for years the question of “is fashion week dying”12 has been an ongoing conversation among fashion insiders. “In a world that has become increasingly immediate, the current way of showing a collection four months before it is available to consumers is an antiquated idea and one that no longer makes sense,” designer Tom Ford told WWD in 201613. “We have been living with a fashion calendar and system that is from another era.”
While some may believe the fashion week runway format is old fashioned, this system, including its environmental footprint, still exists, “but has arguably lost step in a world where everything is instantly visible across various social media platforms14.” Today, designers and brands can bypass store partners and sell straight to their customers through their own websites. It has become routine for consumers to stream new products that fast fashion popularised and these forces have transformed the fashion industry.
But there is an obvious business reason why fashion weeks, even with all the ongoing criticism lasted so long: they work. Yes, there are serious issues that need addressing, but fashion shows have proven a highly effective medium in terms of their principal role: to go to market and maximise exposure, much of it free.
Launchmetrics have quantified this by calculating the ‘Media Impact Value’ (MIV) of shows15. The MIV measures the impact of relevant media placements on all channels (online, social, print), inclusive of paid, owned and earned mediums ‘in order to derive a quantitative number for performance outcomes’16. These figures are weighted according to the quality of the ‘Voice’ (be it from influencers, owned media, celebrities, traditional media or partners) in order to ascertain a comparable measure to determine the relative value of fashion events.
12https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/4/18206907/new-york-fashion-week-2019-death
13https://wwd.com/fashion-news/designer-luxury/tom-ford-switches-show-consumer- schedule-10341072/
14https://www.universityoffashion.com/blog/are-fashion-shows-still-relevant/
15https://wwd.com/business-news/technology/launchmetrics-quantifies-paris-couture-week- assigning-value-to-likes-1203220876/
16https://www.launchmetrics.com/miv-methodology