New York Fashion Week on Social: Influencers, Instagram, and Facebook Live

How are Fashion Week publishers, brands, and tastemakers engaging on social? We explore New York Fashion Week across Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. 

Ah, fashion week. The time of year that the rest of us are taught what to wear. From New York to London to Milan, brands and publishers alike are covering how the beautiful people dress.
With New York Fashion Week done, we decided to investigate just which stories are seeing the most engagement across social media. Using NewsWhip Spike, we looked at the biggest fashion stories for publishers across Facebook and Pinterest, and native Facebook and Instagram content.
As we saw , social media is offering more ways than ever for publishers to tell stories. For fashion, this could be behind-the-scenes looks, interactive Facebook Live guides, or access to fashion experts.
Let’s see which stories dominated the runway.

The Top Stories of New York Fashion Week

There were a few stories that dominated New York Fashion Week, transcending beyond the clothes.

Publishers saw big engagement for NYFW stories that covered human rights, social issues, celebrities, and body positivity. If we expand our look to the top 50 articles, this trend remains.

Social issues accounted for more than half of the top 50. Celebrity news and body positivity were also popular topics. Taking a look at the publishers, E! Online, Huffington Post, and Vogue/Teen Vogue had the most articles in the top 50, with four each.
Fashion is often not regarded as a hard news or relevant topic to current events, but these top stories challenge that. These stories show how fashion can be woven in with prominent news topics. Fashion is a human expression, one that has been historically tied to human conflicts, and continues to be so, with examples like the recent ‘burkini’ ban in France. 

Celebrities Strike a Pose on Facebook

Pivoting to native Facebook content, celebrities and tastemakers drove the most engagement. Behind-the-scenes and outfit photos were the most popular. However, Reshma Qureshi, the acid attack victim, did figure in again at number four in the top 10 most engaging native posts.
This photo from Kylie Jenner was the most engaging native post on both Facebook and Instagram for New York Fashion Week.
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It drove over 394,000 likes/reactions, 11,878 shares, and 3,300 comments. Celebrities and influencers lead a tremendous audience on social. Millennials and Generation Z tastemakers like Kylie have the added advantage of being social media natives. As such, they are often adroit at exciting their followers. 
Others picked up on this tactic too. Designer Sherri Hill posted a backstage photo of Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach, this year’s Miss Universe. The photo drove over 240,000 total Facebook reactions.  
For Facebook video, we see a return to our publishers’ trends. Six of the top ten videos were about Reshma Qureshi, the acid attack victim who walked the runway.
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This video from NowThis was viewed 1.4 million times and drove over 43,000 likes/reactions, 8,700 shares, and 476 comments. Positive stories like this are inherently shareable. People like inspirational, feel-good stories about overcoming insurmountable odds, as we saw in our analysis of top publisher videos.
Did these trends hold up for Live video?

The top Live video came from Ralph Lauren, a stream of their September collection on the runway. The video drove over 14,000 total engagements and 480,000 views.
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Other Live video kept up with the trends we’ve seen from fashion before. Inside scoops, exclusive looks, and access to industry experts and celebrities were popular tactics for Live video.
This video from The Mighty was in line with our previous trends. It depicted Madeline Snow, a model with Down’s Syndrome, and her story.
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Even for Live video, those inspirational stories are still popular. Live video lets viewers interact with the person and story in real time.  

Outfit Inspiration Reigns on Instagram

The same Facebook trends held true on Instagram, with celebrities leading the majority of top posts. Their photos of their Fashion Week outfits drove the most likes on Instagram.

These were the nine top-liked Instagram posts related to New York Fashion week. Along with those, other publishers were able to drive high engagement around NYFW. This photo from Instagram featured third.

View this post on Instagram

For Kerby Jean-Raymond (@kerbito), fashion shows are a chance to invite viewers into the life and mind of a designer. “I tend to break from the typical fashion show format because I always found it boring and sterile,” says the designer of his show for Pyer Moss (@pyermoss) on Sunday during New York Fashion Week. “We walked the viewer through the tedious process of making art and the ridiculousness of having to sell it and all the problems that come with that.” Kerby’s dynamic shows are often among the most talked about moments of the week — a victory for a designer who was warned about the limits that exist in the industry for people of color. “I always held the belief that if you can’t get your foot in the door, go down the street and build your own house,” says Kerby, who is pictured here after the Pyer Moss show in February 2015. “I’m honored to be amongst a new class of designers who don’t abide by the rules of that glass ceiling.” Photo of @kerbito by @dariothephotog

A post shared by Instagram (@instagram) on Sep 11, 2016 at 2:40pm PDT

The photo gave followers a behind-the-scenes look at New York Fashion Week, with direct quotes from designers. The photo had over 638,000 likes and 4,700 comments. This gave followers a different look at Fashion Week, one not from the runway or the models’ perspective.
Speaking of the models, National Geographic, hardly a newcomer to high Instagram engagement, had the 14th most-liked Instagram post for NYFW.

View this post on Instagram

Photo by Stephanie Sinclair @stephsinclairpix // Belgian-Senegalese model Amy Lefevre @lefevre20 and African-American model and activist Diandra Forrest @diandraforrest during a casting call in preparation for the @lanyucoutureofficial show coming up tomorrow, Sept. 13th, as part of New York Fashion Week, from which we will be posting an Instagram story. While there is an increasing trend to expand the definition of beauty in the fashion world, people with albinism are still severely discriminated against and even attacked for their appearance in some countries – despite the fact that the rare genetic condition occurs in all racial and ethnic groups globally. People who have albinism have a reduced amount of melanin pigment in their skin, hair and/or eyes. In the U.S., approximately one in 18,000 to 20,000 people has some type of albinism. In other parts of the world, the occurrence can be as high as one in 3,000. @sodajonesinc #onassignment #NYC #photography #humanrights #fashion #activism #NYFW2016

A post shared by National Geographic (@natgeo) on Sep 12, 2016 at 3:02pm PDT

The photo detailed some of the social issues that models, and regular people, face if they have albinism. The Instagram post drove over 228,000 likes and 755 comments.
Other brands on Instagram also did well. H&M took fashion fans along for the trip, Forever21 showed their influencers ready for the week, and MAC Cosmetics re-grammed one of their artists’ lip palettes from the MAC show at NYFW.

Pinterest Helps Us Decide What to Wear

Pinterest, the visual bulletin board, is well-suited for fashion. That in mind, we took at which New York Fashion Week articles saw the most pins.

Style guides were the most popular for the top ten articles on Pinterest. Celebrities featured again, as people pinned what the fashion influencers were wearing during Fashion Week. The most popular publisher here was the Daily Mail, accounting for four of the top ten articles on Pinterest.

Put Your Content on the Catwalk

Since most of us can’t watch from the runway, social media offers instant access to fashion weeks worldwide. Designers can get their latest looks to consumers Live, and influencers can hold instant sway on their own social platforms.
Social metrics reveal the fashion stories and current events that people care about and are sharing on to others. These stories can often be surprising, as was the case with social issues dominating NYFW’s trending topics.
By keeping up with the latest viral stories, fashion publishers and brands alike can tailor their content to their audience’s cravings and keep them coming back for more.