Who Won the SS27 Womenswear on Social ?

The SS27 Data Snapshot

SS27 Fashion Month reached $1.2 billion in Earned Media Value (EMV), a 41% year-on-year growth, according to Lefty data. Newness this season came through a focus on capturing new audiences: Gen Alpha via gaming streamers, and new regions via international talent, from APAC stars to pop culture’s latest breakout names. Beyond the headline EMV figures, brands tapped into subcultures through insider, IYKYK casting, while smaller labels scaled back their guestlists to connect with close-knit communities and the tastemakers whose recommendations carry real weight.

Talent Strategy

Meet Fashion Month’s Game Changers

A 2026 Dazed survey found that 100% of Gen Alpha respondents play games daily. Gaming platforms like Roblox and Fortnite, alongside streaming sites Twitch and Kick, are becoming increasingly influential channels for reaching younger audiences. The brands that understand gaming’s potential and establish genuine presence early will make the biggest impact on the next generation of consumers.

The Rise of Twitch Streamers

This season, Coach, KIDSuper, Kim Shui, Burberry and H&M invited popular Twitch streamers to their shows, with some even livestreaming from the front row. In New York, Kai Cenat, who boasts 22M Twitch followers, debuted his brand, Vivet, generating $2.3M in Instagram EMV. In London, Swedish streamer Marlon Lundgren Garcia became the week’s #1 influencer, outperforming the APAC idols who typically dominate the rankings.

"These types of gamers have demolished the “dude in a gamer chair” stereotype, replacing
it with high-production content, designer fits, and legitimate moves into fashion and music away from your typical Twitch content," says James Davis, writer of Drawn Distant. Through his platform, Davis explores the player archetype he dubbed as the Style Driven Gamer. “They’re not just into games; they’re into what games do to culture. Gaming is their portal – it unlocks new curiosities as if they were side quests. People like Kai Cenat, Valkyrae and IShowSpeed are the epitome of this.”

Level Up Your Gaming Strategy

Partnering with gamers is a surefire way to resonate, but brands can go further. "So many people are gamers, they just may not refer to themselves as one. PinkPantheress adores Red Dead Redemption 2 and features on GTA VI’s soundtrack. Megan Thee Stallion referenced just about every fighter game icon under the sun in her music video for BOA. Why not bring them to fashion week, but engage them through a gaming angle," suggests Davis.

Thai Drama: Inside the Fantasy Economy

What is Thai Drama?

Thailand’s Boys’ Love (BL) and Girls’ Love (GL) dramas, known collectively as Y-series, take after the Japanese ‘yaoi’ and ‘yuri’ genres, which depicts romantic same-sex relationships. The phenomenon went mainstream with Love Sick (2014), adapted from a popular online novel, before the pandemic accelerated its rise as streaming and social media let fandoms flourish outside of Southeast Asia. Globally, Y-series offer what many international viewers struggle to find elsewhere: same-sex love stories with happy endings and romance free of traditional gender norms.

The 'Khujin' Model

Thai studios use the ‘khujin’ model (‘คู่จิ้น’, or ‘imagined couple’): two lead actors are cast as a couple and then promoted as a pair long after filming ends, appearing together at events and at fan meetings. Fans are invited to imagine the romance continues off-screen – the ‘shipping’ culture – and extend it with their own content, creating a powerful, ongoing narrative.

International Impact

Beyond Thailand, these actor pairings have fans around the world. China, amid government restrictions on domestic BL production, is the biggest international audience for Thai dramas. LATAM is an audience on the rise: Thomas Teetut and Kong Jirojmontri held a fan meeting in Brazil last year, and Freen, who sparked $1.5M EMV for Valentino this season, is scheduled to tour across Mexico, Peru, Brazil and Chile.

An Expanding Ecosystem of Influence

Stars’ glam teams and families are increasingly part of the fashion week story. Beyond amplifying talent, they offer a more intimate, less orchestrated view of the runway that feels less like official coverage and more like being there. At Dior, Orm’s mother generated $8.9M EMV with behind-the-scenes content, while makeup artist ‘Homeless Makeup’ generated $101.7M EMV through Thai stars’ makeup tutorials, candid runway reactions and backstage content.

Brand Strategy

The Authority of the Archive

In a schedule where hundreds of brands compete for attention, what gives a brand substance? Often the answer lies in something more enduring than social hype: heritage.

Reviving Icons

This season, beyond celebrity-filled front rows, many brands turned to their archives as a strategic storytelling strategy, transforming house history into cultural currency. At Burberry, the house’s 170th anniversary became a moment to reinforce its British identity. SS27 show guests were also invited to a tour of ‘The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon’ at London’s V&A Museum, offering
a deeper immersion into their most iconic garment. At Chanel, Matthieu Blazy quite literally dug into the archives, opening and closing the runway with Gabrielle Chanel’s original 2.55 handbag. A 70-year-old artefact resurfaced to reaffirm the brand’s provenance.

Archivist Influencers

This strategy extended beyond the runway: collectors, curators, auctioneers and fashion archivists are becoming increasingly influential in the guest list mix. Archivists such as Tanya Ravichandran, spotted at Alexander McQueen or Anaa Saber (of @ daisuki.nyc) at Prada, offer their followers insight into a brand’s history – and for brands, a contemporary voice servicing their cultural legacy and lore.

This shift speaks more broadly to the fashion industry’s growing proximity to the second-hand and collectables market, where provenance, scarcity and historical significance can be as important as the object itself.

Knowledge is the New Ownership

In an industry driven by constant newness, archives and archivists offer something deeper: knowledge is the new ownership, meaning brands need to build a narrative worth knowing – and returning to. Without a story, clothes are just clothes.

Communications Strategy

In Long-Form We Trust

Long-form writing is enjoying a revival. As a counterpoint to the constant stream of short, snappy content, the ability to write about collections eloquently and at length is embraced as a more considered form of reportage.

The Substack Sway

An evolution of the ‘Fashion Intellectuals’ we identified for AW26, Substackers were in demand this season. Its community of tastemakers has become a marker of authority on the front row.Voices such as Brenda Hashtag, Violet Grace Atkinson and Chani Ra, who bring an informed perspective to collections, helped not only to hook audiences but also to build brand lore. Together, Substackers drove $852.3K EMV on Instagram, with a healthy average engagement rate of 5.03% per post.

This is part of a broader move by brands towards Substack. After becoming the first luxury brand to launch a Substack in 2025, Balenciaga announced an official sponsorship of Substack writers earlier this summer. More recently, Chanel Beauty supported the launch of Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu with personal essays by Substackers about their relationship with the fragrance.

Reading the Room

With young audiences turning to long-form as a way to slow down and step away from screens, brands have been aligning themselves with literature.

This season’s most prevalent example came from Valentino – a brand which generated $27M EMV on IG. For its ‘Antibiblioteca’ show, staged by Bureau Betak in Paris’ Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, the brand asked every guest to bring a book, briefly replacing typical show coverage with a flood of reading recommendations. Commentary from‘the internet’s resident librarian’, Jack Edwards, strengthened the concept and generated $298.5K EMV on Instagram, with a healthy 7.27% engagement rate. Elsewhere, Coach, which has courted #BookTok in previous seasons, hosted TikToker Kitty Lever ahead of the release of her poetry book.

Production Strategy

The New Rules of the Set

The fashion show is one of the most powerful tools for brand storytelling. The set, the casting, the soundtrack and the staging all carry meaning. Audiences increasingly want to decode that world, tracing references and unpicking symbols.

The online show archive @atlasofshows is testament to this. Started by Livia Grigori and Dan Ricciardi as a research project, the account has grown a community of more than 120K followers drawn to the stories behind the spectacle.

Sets that Speak Volumes

This season, Diesel’s scenography was a conversation starter. Performers hidden among guests began kissing and head-banging, an experience @atlasofshows described as ‘“destabilising” experience, charged with an energy that screens couldn’t fully capture. The show went viral online, with the brand’s Instagram EMV rising 301% YoY.

Alainpaul’s The Scene also put performance centre stage, with a “morning rave” inspired by underground club culture. Directed by Charli XCX’s choreographer Eric Christison, the dancers moved to a mix by Shygirl. As @atlasofshows noted, concepts like these can help smaller brands leave a lasting impression.

Introducing New Strategies

Demna staged the aptly named ‘The Store Show’ inside a meticulously constructed replica of Gucci’s new retail concept. By using the runway to introduce its future retail identity, Gucci invited audiences into a new world they will be able to experience themselves when the concept rolls out globally.

Resees, Reimagined

The resee has become another touchpoint for world-building, and this season brands pushed it further. The format drove a collective $231K in Instagram EMV, the first time Lefty data captured such significant impact. Celine’s standout resee at Hôtel Particulier Colbert de Torcy felt more like an exhibition, extending the show’s reach while bringing the collection into closer focus.