Impact of social media on fashion trends

Social media platforms play a more significant role in the fashion world than ever before. Before Instagram, the industry seemed inaccessible to many consumers, and a handful of brands dominated it. Now, if you can master your social channels, you have a chance of becoming incredibly popular quickly.

For your clothing brand, it’s essential to learn about the impact of social media on consumer preferences in fashion trends. This guide has everything you need, covering:

• Working with influencers 
• Embracing diversity
• Using hype
• Going viral

One of the most significant changes that social media has made to fashion is the people who influence consumers. Bloggers, models, comedians and social media personalities have taken over and content is critical. Whether that content is on YouTube of someone sharing their food recipes, someone playing a video game on Twitch, or a viral dance on TikTok. These new types of online celebrities are called influencers.

70% of teens trust influencers more than traditional celebrities, according to Google’s research.

Every influencer has a fan base, and they create content tailored for them. This skill goes hand in hand with their ability to market themselves. As a result, brands often ask them to sell their products to their audience. With the ability to pick and choose which names in the fashion they wear, influencers have a considerable impact on their legions of fans.

Many influencers launch their clothing brands if they have a broad enough market. Still, it is a race for clothing businesses to get influencers to share their products. These individuals are one of the critical social media marketing channels you should be looking to use to advertise your clothing. 

If you can’t become an influencer, you should find others who appeal to your target audience and engage with them. Then, you can quickly gain traction on the platforms through partnerships, mentions, or even getting them to wear your clothes in their content.

One of the most positive changes for fashion is that social media accelerates representation for many groups. Social platforms provide a voice to anyone. It’s certainly not restricted to the linear ideas of beauty from the past. You can now be a model regardless of size, skin colour, disability, sexuality, gender, and so on. 

According to research by The Fashion Spot, Spring 2022 is the most racially diverse season ever in fashion. Looking at 198 shows, 48% of the models were people of colour.

With the changes of the models that are now so represented, more consumers than ever are engaging with fashion. Those who may not have felt like it was for them in the past can see someone who looks like them, which opens up the possibilities for clothing.

Making sure that your clothing brand reflects society and the wider world isn’t just positive for consumers’ views of themselves. It also means that you can be more experimental and try new things regarding the fashion that you create. In addition, having access to a broader audience may mean that you can engage with more people and work with different influencers. 

Social media did not create the fashion practice of creating a considerable amount of hype around products and deliberately only releasing a limited number. 

That being said, creating viral conversations made this process easier. Primarily a favoured tactic by brands like Nike and Adidas to launch a select number of shoes. You quickly see the value of them skyrocket. Some companies and individuals solely resell these shoes because of how much they can make.

Hubspot surveyed 300 people to ask about fashion, 45% said that scarcity of a product makes them want to learn more about it.

Social media has led to new collaborations with influencers and celebrities, leading to even more demand for a limited release or piece of clothing. Kanye West is a well-known example of this, with his shoes being amongst the most expensive as their resale value is so high. Some brands have created their business around this low supply and high demand tactic, like fashion newcomer Supreme.

This form of fashion is very popular with celebrities to celebrate their lavish lifestyle. That’s because social media allows the ability to see these individuals often wearing the clothing, their value increases and more of the public desire the products. If you can create such a high level of demand for your fashion, deliberately releasing a low number of items may be a way to charge higher prices.

Another significant change that social media has had over consumer preferences in fashion is how things can go in and out of it. Social media centres around trends, especially platforms that rely on constant engagement like TikTok. Anything can go viral so quickly that it can’t be challenging to foresee what it will be. 

A study by Invideo found that on TikTok, every 100 views generates 12 engagements on average (likes, comments and shares).

Rapid trends can either be a problem or an opportunity for many clothing companies. The key is to adapt quickly to whatever is happening at the moment or try to create a trend yourself. For example, a viral dance may involve people dressing in seventies clothes, so it’s your chance to sell your denim. Or you may have sunglasses that you want to sell, so you try and start a challenge where people wear as many pairs as possible.

Keeping up with trends on social media can be difficult. Depending on your target audience, you may notice that they use specific platforms more than others. So you can focus your attention on those. The rate of change of audiences moving from one platform to another is quick as well, but this means you should always be on the lookout for new opportunities.

Running a clothing business requires you to manage your finances to avoid any problems with your supply chain and production. Thousands of business owners use the Countingup all to make their financial admin easier.

Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like receipt capture tools, you can make sure that any expenses that your fashion brand has can be easily recorded.

Cash flow insights also allow you to keep your business running smoothly and ensure that you have all the funds you need to keep up with the trends.

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