How the fashion industry starts trends and then forgets all about them

AI, Data, NFTs

I’m having a really annoying week and trying to express my frustration is a difficult exercise!

Fashion loves and runs towards empty social media content and clickable content as long as it flatters the ego. We’re basically made to make sure that PRs, brands, influencers and so on are happy enough to regram your content in their stories and therefore make a buzz.

The fashion industry has a very (annoying) habit of focusing on a specific tech development and push it into people’s face and then promote it, write about it, force you to only just see IT on social media and then they just abandon it on the side road.

Example: NFTs. Remember that fun craze? People were going insane over it - The fashion industry started creating NFTs left, right and center without really understanding anything about it and well.. who’s talking about NFTs now? No one. No exaggeration.

This is my current issue with data. At Tagwalk, we’ve been crunching and analysing unbiased data for about 8 years. We have the most incredible numbers and reliable results, we see trends way before anyone else, we also see the performance of brands, their pieces etc but we’re also a tiny tiny team with absolutely no marketing or communication around us and no sales force. It’s not an excuse, but it’s also not an excuse to go and believe data that makes no sense because they package it better!

Over the last 6 months, I feel like we’ve been submerged by incredibly crappy indicators in which we have no idea how the results have been calculated yet we’re being force fed this data and are taught to listen to it.

Last week, an account that I really like on Instagram did post where they said ‘Valentino when their new collection is the most popular of paris fashion week so far with 140% more positive press than the average’.

This got me confused. Based on what? Which press? What sources? How many countries? How many comments were analysed? What’s considered a ‘positive’ keyword? Based on which period of time?

I need to understand the numbers - you can’t just throw numbers out there and assume it’s going to be ok - Data has to be precise. It’s not a game or a meme, these numbers effect a lot of the brands once they’re published.

About a year ago, Coperni made the buzz with their Bella Hadid dress however on Tagwalk, buyers weren’t really looking at the collection. I flagged it. The PR said ‘well, my data shows it made the buzz’. It just depends if you want buzz or if you want a different kind of truth I guess? I’m sure that if I had said it was number 1 in searches, that data would have been flaunted everywhere.

Vogue Runway has just added online their ‘top 10 shows’ so I’m like ‘that’s great but based on what?’ Apparently…. wait for it… ‘The most views’.

Erm… how many views are we talking about? When did you start and stop the data? We need context. Data always needs context.

Fashion loves and runs towards emptiness as long as it flatters the ego. We’re basically made to make sure that PRs, brands, influencers and so on are flattered enough to regram your content in their stories and therefore make a buzz.

The worst part is that I’m clearly a little envious about this whole buzz system but deep down, I know that in the long run, only pure, unbiased and good data will prevail.

Thanks for listening to my rant.

Love,

A

ps: we’re selling this insane BIG BOOK OF DATA! BUY IT!