Depth | Inviting stars to the catwalk, will it be the best solution to the fashion show traffic dilemma? |Fashion Show|Beijing|Balenciaga_Sina Fashion_Sina.com

Reprinted from: WWD International Fashion News

Original title: Depth | Inviting stars to the catwalk, will it be the best solution to the fashion show traffic dilemma?

As consumers’ sensory thresholds increase, regular new product release shows have long been unable to touch their nerves. After getting together with the spokespersons of the official announcement to make blood transfusions, brands rushed to push the stars onto the runway so that the big show could start quickly.

Some time ago, as the first luxury brand to hold an offline fashion show in China this year, Prada held the 2022 autumn and winter men’s and women’s re-engraving show at the Beijing Palace. It is reported that the brand selected about 40 styles from the fashion show in Milan Fashion Week at the beginning of the year to reproduce in Beijing.

Compared with the model-led Milan debut, Beijing’s re-enactment show is more like a Vanity Fair event with stars on stage. In addition to inviting spokesperson Cai Xukun to sit in the front row of the show, the brand also invited Chun Xia, Li Yifeng, Hui Yinghong and Huang. The stars, Jue and Liao Fan, walked the runway with the models, which made the popularity of the entire fashion show rise steeply. According to statistics, this show has a total of 92.7 million views on multiple platforms such as Douyin, Xiaomi TV, Tencent Video, Jiemian News, and Baidu Xiyang Yuan Universe ZhiWU. On the Weibo hot search list, the number of reads is as high as 43.827 million.

　

In view of the continuous improvement in the performance contribution of the Chinese market, fashion and luxury brands have begun to hold shows in China one after another, and inviting local stars to appear on the stage seems to be a must-have program. In April last year, Fendi shipped the 2021 Spring Haute Couture collection, the first work of creative director Kim Jones, to the Shanghai Exhibition Center to reproduce. A star made a surprise appearance as a guest model. Coincidentally, Dior Men, also helmed by Kim Jones, chose to show the 2021 autumn menswear collection in Beijing for the second time at the end of 2020. The brand invited five brand ambassadors, Huang Xuan, Chen Feiyu, Wang Junkai, Huang Jingyu and Han Dongjun, to walk the show in the same frame, which was triggered on social media. widely discussed.

　　

Some people may think that summoning stars to catwalk is only popular in Asian countries with strong rice circle culture, and most of them happen on re-enactment shows that focus on attracting local consumer groups. But the reality is that even in the more orthodox and authoritative fashion week occasions, it is not uncommon for celebrities to mix and match models on the same show.

In July, Demna held its second couture collection show in Balenciaga. If pop culture icons like Kim Kardashian and Dua Lipa are expected to walk on the catwalk, then the addition of Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman is a complete break from inertia, so before that show, Nicole Kidman seldom chose Balenciaga’s The single product, her elegant and classic goddess image is also separated from the brand’s slanted, absurd and funny characteristics.

In the earlier Balenciaga summer 22 series show, there also appeared a shadow face-Isabelle Huppert.

　　

It can be clearly seen that Balenciaga, who has not appointed any star ambassadors so far, plays star cards differently from other brands: instead of simply inviting celebrities to serve as brand facades, art director Demna deconstructs them and smashes the inherent label. Later, it promotes the overlapping and overlapping of the star and the brand image. For Demna, Balenciaga isn’t defined or made by stars. Instead, it was Balenciaga that fostered a facet of the star that was rich in the brand’s DNA.

In addition to Balenciaga, in recent years, there are many cases where brands have issued catwalk invitations to stars by taking advantage of the opportunity of the debut of new products. From Dua Lipa alone taking over the opening and closing of Versace’s 2022 spring and summer fashion show, to Jessica Zheng, who became popular overnight with the hit drama “Squid Game”, kicked off the Louis Vuitton 2022 autumn and winter show, and stars emerging on the flyover will lead the brand To what new future? When a household name has replaced fashion as the interest of the outside world, has the show lost its meaning?

Undoubtedly, the biggest benefit to the brand of celebrities joining the catwalk is naturally the boost in traffic. Alison Stiefel, general manager of the digital shopping platform, pointed out that the question of “what a star wears” can always arouse the curiosity of many people. People tend to obtain relevant information through active search, and in addition to the general public, there are many media that rely on entertainment information. Will also keep an eye on the stars’ every move. This means that when a star appears in the show, the whole show will jump from a niche carnival of fashion media and trend lovers to a hot topic in the public opinion field, and the increase in brand visibility and penetration will naturally come naturally.

For example, during the Paris Men’s Fashion Week in June this year, Celine invited the brand’s global spokesperson, Lisa, a member of the South Korean girl group Blackpink, and South Korean stars Kim Taehyung and Park Baojian to attend the show. The same frame of the three traffic stars caused a huge commotion on the spot. A large number of fans stationed outside the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, where the show was located, screamed and shouted the names of their idols. This time, the huge support even alarmed Bernard, chairman and CEO of LVMH. Arnault and the fashion media present. The current event provided rich reporting material for the well-known French fashion journalist Loic Prigent. Bernard Arnault was delighted at this unexpected climax and praised in an interview that “Lisa is a global success.”

It is worth noting that several Hallyu idols represented by Lisa are only attending the show this time. Such a common routine operation to change to a traffic star is enough to set off a monstrous noise. If these stars go into battle in person, they will have a deeper relationship with the brand. interaction, which is bound to become an out-of-the-circle event under the viral spread of fanatical fans.

　

On the topic of manufacturing, stars are naturally unattainable high-potential media. In recent years, when the retro craze has been making great strides, some brands have chosen Shunfeng Zhang Fan and joined hands with celebrities to stage “Memories Killing” to arouse the emotional resonance of the public. Take Versace as an example. During the Spring/Summer 2020 Fashion Week, creative director Donatella Versace handed over the task of closing the show to Jennifer Lopez, an American singer who has a deep relationship with the brand. During the millennium, Jennifer Lopez once wore a slit-front translucent green tulle Versace dress to the Grammy Awards, and the visual tension immediately aroused heated discussions on the Internet.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in an interview, “[At the time]everyone was searching for this dress, and it was the hottest search topic we’ve ever seen.” So when it came to the Spring/Summer 2020 show, Donatella Versace specially let Jennifer Lopez appear in a new design similar to the classic design of the year. When the latter strode around the circular flyover, the audience screamed one after another. The whole show was pushed to a climax.

　　

The addition of celebrities allows the release show to reach a wider audience with the help of a huge fan base, thereby further promoting the promotion of brand awareness. But can such high-frequency and massive instantaneous exposure be transformed into the potential energy of climbing performance?

Diane von Furstenberg, the former chairman of the CFDA of the American Fashion Association, mentioned in an interview, “Nowadays, whether designers or retailers, almost all complain about fashion shows. The industry needs new ideas, and now everyone is starting to feel consumer-oriented. The fashion show is a great idea.” When it comes to consumption-oriented fashion shows, the public may subconsciously think of the “see now, buy now” model, but in fact, it is also a common method to let celebrities bring goods on the catwalk.

As early as 2014, the fashion business media BoF conducted an in-depth investigation of the star catwalk boom in South Asia. In this report, a number of brands and designers provided evidence for the effect of bringing goods to the star’s catwalk. Pakistani menswear brand Republic said it experienced an immediate sales boost after well-known actor Fawad Khan guest-modeled the runway. “A large number of consumers flocked to the store the day after the show, and almost everyone had a photo of Fawad Khan on their mobile phone. The media and the public loved him, and there was no denying that Fawad Khan wore his clothes very well. It’s beautiful,” says brand designer Omar Farooq.

However, arranging celebrity catwalk shows is not without its drawbacks, because the popular search physique of celebrities can make good things go out and bad things can spread thousands of miles. In the discussion community Zhihu, the public is generally opposed to “how to view the stars on the catwalk”. The hardware conditions are not up to standard, the steps are stretched, and the catwalk team is a little abrupt, which are the reasons for high frequency appearance. Some users bluntly said, “The main function of models is to display clothes and better express the designer’s design. Meaning, stars have less training in this area, and catwalks always give people a feeling of walking the red carpet, not to mention show.”

At the just-concluded Prada show in Beijing, even if the spokesperson performed in person, the brand was still attacked by bullets of public opinion. The most popular criticism is the spring and summer style, which was first performed by the new generation model Kaia Garber at Milan Fashion Week, and the gap between the star and the model caused the presentation effect to be greatly reduced. Large shoulders and narrow, five or five points up and down, netizens commented that “let people recognize the reality of seller’s show vs buyer’s show”.

　

Although Li Yifeng’s outfit was not ridiculed by the whole network as in the spring and summer, there was also a lot of criticism: high-neck sweaters did not fit Li Yifeng’s round face and short neck, and even loose suits were sampled by celebrities. spirit. The logic behind Prada’s invitation to a celebrity to go to the catwalk is not difficult to understand. It is nothing more than trying to make this offline show a phenomenon-level communication event, but what confuses the outside world is that even the spokesperson with the highest degree of fit with the brand cannot successfully control the latest series, then How many ordinary consumers would be willing to pay for it?

Celebrities can certainly enhance the viewing experience of a release show, but they may also lead to blurring of the outside world‘s focus. There are market arguments that star appearances may be the biggest threat to a launch show, because they will be the only thing remembered by the media and the public. And the creative director’s painstakingly crafted collection, which should have been the most important part of the show, was completely marginalized.

For example, in Celine’s Spring/Summer 2023 menswear show, Hallyu stars headed by Lisa took almost all the limelight, making it difficult for the public to notice that the brand has undergone a major change in the hands of creative director Hedi Slimane – catering to the street trend of the TikTok generation and exiting history On stage, the flamboyant rock-and-roll style is fully revived.

It is worth pointing out that even if the catwalk lineup is more eye-catching, if the design displayed is not too bright, the show will also be criticized. Since joining Fendi, Kim Jones has invited star supermodels such as Demi Moore, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington and Bella Hadid to perform his first couture collection. Perhaps unfamiliar with womenswear and haute couture, Kim Jones did not create a blockbuster moment for Fendi on this show, but the mediocrity of the clothing exposed the designer’s own shortcomings. The well-known fashion media “PaperMagazine” commented that the show is full of heavyweight star supermodels, which makes the whole show look like it is relying on the starlight of these celebrities, rather than stimulating the public’s desire to watch through clothes.

For brand release shows, stars are obviously more powerful drainage tools that can radiate to the mass market compared to models who are high and low. But whether the brand can withstand the surging traffic, it will be shocking at the moment of the much-anticipated, rather than full of flaws, perhaps the most critical thing is to pass the product and design first. WWD

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