How Influencers are Changing the Landscape of the Fashion Industry

While many face criticism, influencers’ marketability to the fashion industry is essential.

Over a decade ago, “Gossip Girl” costume designer Eric Daman scoped the grounds of Upper East Side private schools, perusing through boutiques to curate the show’s fashion aesthetic.

The 2007 show was heavily defined by its showcase of elaborate brands such as Alexander McQueen, Chanel and Ralph Lauren.

Nowadays, Daman shared with HBO Max a different tactic for the show’s 2021 reboot: social media.

The growing popularity of social media has dominated the 21st century. As of 2020, about half of the global population is using social media. Along with the growing online crowd, digital advertisements have provided social media sites with a money-making strategy.

Although society’s growing interest in the digital has allowed social media platforms to profit immensely, the same cannot be said for printed publications.

The growing accessibility of digital publication has forced many to market themselves online. With fashion print magazines like Vogue, the forceful transition has not been easy. However, in an economy that’s become digital, magazines need to embrace the digital culture in order to stay relevant.

Platforms like Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube offer a variety of advice, challenges, critiques and visual entertainment regarding fashion. Even fashion brands and magazines have social media content to advertise trends and products. These sites not only provide a space for consumers to trek down their sartorial styles, but digital marketing has become a business strategy to sell to consumers.

With fashion brands and magazines recognizing social media’s influence, there is a new business strategy dominating the fashion industry: the branding of influencers.

An influencer is an amalgamation of an entrepreneur and a celebrity. Influencers have the unique duty to influence—something they can do in many ways. In a fashion sense, influencers can post pictures of their outfit on Instagram to endorse their brand sponsors, videos of clothing hauls and humorous sketches related to fashion (for example, the front row fashion challenge on TikTok).

The social media content that garners millions of views provides not only influencers, but the fashion companies endorsing them, with significant revenue.

As we spend more time online, the influencer has started to become a cornerstone of our everyday life. Thus, influencers’ digital fame has become marketable to the fashion industry. Personalities like Julien Calloway, a novice fashion influencer starring in the “Gossip Girl” reboot, prove that influencers are bleeding into both the territories of fiction and reality.

Although influencers have advanced into the fashion sphere, there’s been heavy resistance to their presence in the fashion industry.

Take the influencers who’ve been invited as guests to the Met Gala, for example. The recent 2021 Met Gala showcased personalities such as Nikkie Tutorials, Emma Chamberlain and Addison Rae. Their inclusion in the elite ball was heavily chastised and criticized by many.

Often, these criticisms leveled on assumptions that the popularity of influencers was not equitable to the traditional public figures invited. The inequity between influencers and traditional public figures has sprouted due to assumptions of digital media as low-brow content compared to other forms of media.

The similarities between traditional public figures and influencers are closer than most people suspect.

In 1988, Anna Wintour took over as Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Magazine. In the years that followed, she revolutionized the branding of the magazine. For example, she substituted the magazine’s distinctive cover of facial close-ups of skinny models in its heyday with full-bodied images of actors, athletes and musicians.

Although her changes were a source of contention for obstinate people in the industry, her use of highly influential people to market their magazine and fashion brands proved extremely successful.

Just as Anna Wintour has done for the popular faces that have graced her magazine, we are starting to see the same for influencers. There has yet to be an influencer to have graced the Vogue (US) cover.

However, influencers are starting to trickle into Vogue’s international editions and online content, such as James Charles’ Vogue (Portugal) cover, Addison Rae’s Vogue video of what she wears in a week and Dixie D’Amelio’s 24 hour Vogue video. Even haute couture fashion brands like Louis Vuitton are sponsoring Charlie D’Amelio and Emma Chamberlain. Evidently, there is a burgeoning symbiotic relationship between influencers and the fashion industry.

While influencers in the fashion sphere are viewed negatively by most, many positive changes have resulted in their inclusion in this space. Just as public figures have shifted the beauty standards of Vogue, the same can be said with influencers. Many influencers don’t meet the typical body standards of the industry. Their popularity isn’t solely based on aesthetics, but a set of other qualities such as personality and talent.

In an industry that is often touted for its exclusivity and pretension, this exposure of influencers offers a push for inclusion. Now, in this digital age, more of us are starting to see people modeling clothes that fit our body types or adorning makeup products that match our skin tones. We no longer rely on detached fashion executives to choose what’s on trend; instead, influencers have the capability to market fashion as being relatable to all consumers.

In a world where our standards and practices are swiftly changing, the influencer’s space in fashion is something to be embraced.