Analyzing Paris Fashion Week 2021 reactions to Balmain, Hermès & Givenchy
Paris is thought of as the fashion capital of the world, the crème de la crème of design, the home of haute couture. With a long-standing history of setting trends in the industry, the bi-annual Paris Fashion Week dictates style to the rest of the world. Designers, runways and collections come and go, generating hype, criticism and controversy along their path.
Fashion brands are using text analytics solutions like Relative Insight to dig deeper into competitor and customer insights. A key challenge for many brands is measuring the impact or effectiveness of a campaign – be it an advert or fashion show – and understanding how this compares to the wider industry.
In this example, we leveraged comparative analysis to understand how audiences spoke about three iconic French designers over the course of the most recent Paris Fashion Week 2021 – Hermès, Balmain and Givenchy.
Relative Insight is a text analytics tool that layers on top of social listening data. Our technology compares two or more written data sets to uncover the differences in how people speak – the words, phrases, topics and emotion that are more prevalent in one text over another. Looking specifically at tweets spanning from September 25 to October 7, we investigated what language people were using to discuss each designer’s Spring / Summer 2022 show.
Balmain
This year, Olivier Rousteing celebrated his 10th Anniversary as Creative Director of Balmain. The designer took PFW to a whole new level, opening the two-night spectacle with a music festival, which audiences couldn’t help but comment on. However, what grabbed the attention of fashionistas on social media was the influence of celebrities throughout the show.
When discussing Balmain over the period of Paris Fashion Week 2021, audiences were infinitely more likely to mention celeb appearances: Naomi gracing the runway, Neymar sitting front row, Doja Cat’s musical performance and Beyonce narrating a tribute to Rousteing himself. Well-known names ultimately create buzz around a brand, but Balmain have used this effectively and embraced celebrities as part of their fashion week parade.
Hermès
The SS/22 Hermès show was set against the backdrop of orange mobile panels, which opened to reveal the runway of Le Bourget airport during the finale. However, it wasn’t the visuals that got people talking.
Instead, our analysis revealed that those discussing Hermès during Paris Fashion Week 2021 were 11.1x more likely to mention the sustainable cost of fashion. A key trend was that audiences felt strongly about the amount of leather on display at the show. The phrase carbon fashion appeared, with people expressing concern over animal rights and what the future of sustainable fashion looks like.
Relative Insight’s unique approach to text analysis helps brands uncover and track consumer trends. As sustainability becomes an increasingly important factor in the buying decision, its important brands are aware of changing consumer opinion in regard to fashion and have the flexibility to evolve with societal shifts.
Givenchy
The Givenchy SS/22 fashion show had a standout feature that captivated social media users – the role of music. Words such as soundtrack, album, track and songs appeared statistically more in tweets about Givenchy than Balmain or Hermès. Audiences were impressed by new tracks from music artist, Young Thug.
However, important here was the use of the word unreleased. People who watched the show appreciated that they were observing the latest Givenchy designs, along with listening to the much-anticipated debut of Young Thug’s second album. By creating an exclusive experience, Givenchy was able to gain hype around the show as well as align with a popular music artist and tap into his fanbase.
With Relative Insight, fashion apps and brands can truly measure the impact of their newest collections, latest show or sparkly ad campaign. However, the tool also provides a sophisticated and unique approach to competitor benchmarking, enabling designers to understand their competitors on another level.
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