Today, Instagram became the first of many social networks and search engines to unveil its annual year-end data crunch. In addition to warming our hearts with the news that #love was the most-used hashtag of 2016, the report revealed some pretty interesting stats about the year had by the fashion world.
For one, October 1, a Saturday during Paris Fashion Week, was the seventh most Instagrammed day of the year. This is no small feat — the rest of the top 10 list is mostly national holidays (i.e. Halloween, Election Day, Father’s Day, Easter Sunday and the anniversary of 9/11, which, though it fell during New York Fashion Week, can hardly be considered a fashion-centric day).
As we all know, Paris hosts some of the most revered runway shows of the season — Dior, Miu Miu, Chanel, Givenchy, Balmain, Comme des Garçons — upping its grammability factor. Additionally, this year, four of Paris Fashion Week’s nine days saw a designer debut. Olivier Theyskens rebirthed his eponymous brand, Anthony Vaccarello showed his first collection for Saint Laurent, Bouchra Jarrar made her debut at Lanvin, Maria Grazia Chiuri gave the Dior woman a modern makeover and her former colleague Pierpaolo Piccioli flew solo at Valentino.
“There’s the fact that Paris is so darn Instagrammable, period, but there’s also the amazing street style and creativity, obviously, of the collections there,” hypothesized Eva Chen, Instagram’s head of fashion partnerships, when asked why Paris Fashion Week alone saw such social media success.
Plus, Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing and Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci are noted Insta-addicts with vast celebrity #squads who walk their shows (and gram) or, at the very least, sit front row (and gram). And speaking of front rows, on September 29, Jennifer Lawrence, Natalie Portman and Rihanna took in the Dior show, no doubt adding to the frenzy of Insta-activity.
In addition to tracking fashion’s finest hours, the platform determined which fashion personalities gained the most followers over the past year. The list (mostly) reads like a runway call sheet:
- @gigihadid, 16,033,757
- @caradelevingne, 14,333,714
- @haileybaldwin, 5,935,909
- @bellahadid, 5,849,699
- @emrata, 5,685,483
- @victoriabeckham, 5,173,409
- @chrissyteigen, 4,840,896
- @gisele, 3,880,496
- @taylor_hill, 3,624,222
- @angelcandices, 3,480,158
“We’ve seen Gigi’s career really flourish on Instagram, because she takes her followers on this amazing journey as she shares career milestones in a truly authentic way — from her partnership with Tommy Hilfiger to walking in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show for two consecutive years,” Chen told Refinery29. “She’s her true self, and that shows.”
Once brands get wind of these stats, it’s safe to say that we can all expect many, many more Gigi collabs (as if such a thing were possible). Kendall Jenner is, surprisingly, absent from the roundup (although, with 43 million more followers than Gigi, we can hardly say she’s behind). Victoria Beckham — Target collaborator, woman of the people — is the only designer to make the list, with nary a blogger, photographer, stylist or fashion editor in sight.
Stay tuned for more revelatory year-end roundups in the weeks to come.
[ via Fashionista and Refinery29 ]
