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Rihanna, Selena Gomez, Bella Hadid Top Style Influencers For The Year
- by Sarah Mahoney @mahoney_sarah, December 14, 2017
When it comes to shaping the way the world sees fashion, superstar Rihanna, singer Selena Gomez and model Bella Hadid are the world’s most powerful influencers. That’s according to a new ranking from Lyst, the style source that lets the world now which fashion brands are winning based on global searches.
Lyst also noted other fashion moments that drove curious people to their search engines, making the Gucci Marmont the year’s most-wanted fashion accessory, signaling the beginning of the end of the skinny jeans trend and showing a profound interest in Rompergate (remember, the men’s shortsuits that frightened the Internet earlier this spring?)
Rihanna’s power, fueled by her new Fenty beauty line, selling strong at Sephora as well as her Fenty X Pua collection, also made her Fenty X Puma Bow Lyst’s most sought-after sneaker.
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Gomez, with her 120 million Instagram followers, appears in ads for both Coach and Louis Vuitton.
Kylie Jenner, royal Kate Middleton, and royal-to-be Meghan Markle also make the list.
Lyst says it bases its ranking on spikes in demand created by 50 global superstars throughout the year, looking at search and sales response to some of the stars’ most talked-about outfits. (Lyst has 80 million users, and 120 million searches.)
Of course, fashion has plenty of non-celebrity muses, too. A recent Forbes ranking of the top social media influencers says the 10 most powerful fashion bloggers have a total reach of some 31.8 million. (Danielle Bernstein is No. 1, followed by Julia (Gal Meets Glam) Engle, and Chiara (The Blonde Salad) Ferragni.)
But new research shows that even as young fashionista rely more on these powerful influencers when they go shopping, they trust them less. Dealspotr, a social shopping channel, says its annual research on Millennial buying habits finds that people are less accepting of what influencers say, do and wear than they used to be, with 52% saying they trust these social media stars less.
Influencers, though, are named at their No. 1 source for making fashion purchases, at 41%, eclipsing friends and family (31%), TV, magazines and ads, 20%, and celebrities (19%.)
"Millennials now trust social media influencers more than their friends and family for fashion picks and recommendations," says Dealspotr CEO Michael Quoc, in the release. "However, as the influencer economy matures, brands must be hyper-aware of shifting perceptions and increasing skepticism towards online influencers when crafting an influencer marketing strategy."
Reading this article suggests that you are out of touch with the "core" consumer - the consumer that is either on a fixed income or limited descretionary income, and in some cases consumers who are buying gifts for multple people during the holiday season that they would not otherwise buy for. If you look at the state of the economy, specifically those economies in smaller cities where consumers earned income ratio is lower than the national average, you will quickly learn that more and more consumers are price shopping - and not just during the holidays, its a year round trend for these consumers.
You have to be careful when analyzing research, sometimes there are some underlying currents that don't tell the entire story.
Brands and retailers have been on the fore front of cheap prices for decades. For example, Samsung and Best Buy offer whats called Black Friday Specials in Best Buy stores - in this case this could be a television with high quality usually associated with Samsung, however, it may only have two HDMI inputs instead of the standard four that comes with Samsung televisions - therefore the pricing in significantly lower. That's just an example. This is an industry standard, retailers working with brands for less expensive products that they can market as Black Friday Specials.
So I believe your article is missing the point in a couple of areas as it relates to retailers, brands and seasonal consumers. But like most research, it only focuses on certain groups and ignores the other groups.