Three years ago, I had my first exposure to the world of high fashion. I had always been interested in the pieces celebrities wore and the upcoming trends in the latest issue of Vogue, but it wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I owned my first luxury piece. I was in my grandmother’s house looking through her closet when she pulled out a vintage black Chanel crossbody bag with gold hardware and offered it to me as a gift. 

“I have nothing to wear it to anymore, Molly. I want you to have it. It was your Great Aunt Helen’s originally, from the ‘60s,” she told me. This bag had a story. It wasn’t just a bag — it was a piece of art that travelled through a family. I could tell it meant so much to my grandmother and I felt honoured that she trusted me with one of the only designer pieces that she collected in 91 years. 

This is what high fashion should be. It should be defined by pieces of clothing or accessories with a deep culture and a significant story behind them. However, as our world becomes faster paced and our attention spans become shorter, consumers today want to see their favourite celebrities sporting styles they can wear in quick images. Consumers don’t have time to listen to the long histories of various fashion houses or the stories behind certain pieces. 

Our accelerated society is changing the way luxury and high fashion brands have to market themselves. Brands are turning to influencers from platforms such as YouTube and the popular short-form video app TikTok to reach a younger audience and thus engage in contemporary marketing strategies. That being said, the relationship between TikTok and high fashion is certainly a double-edged sword. 

The consumer-based trend that is now occurring raises an existential question to fashion houses themselves: Is it worth potentially sacrificing the traditional sophistication and history of their house in order to access a younger audience and instant sales? 

This question is rooted in an in-depth analysis of the positive and negative effects of the current relationship between TikTok and high fashion. On the one hand, TikTok can serve as an amazing platform to quickly popularise certain items or brands and social media influencers can really help bring in a younger demographic to a brand. Adversely, this relationship can cause consumers to disregard the respectable history behind these fashion houses, encourage an inauthentic side of capitalist fashion, and make inaccessible products appear to be accessible to those who cannot actually afford them. 

With a format built to make videos go instantly viral,TikTok can be an incredible platform for making products and brands have a sudden and great spike in sales. For example, on January 8th, 2021, a TikTok user Natt.Cova made a video about the Kate Spade Heart Crossbody Bag that received almost 40,000 likes. The viral TikTok led users to flock to the Kate Spade market and the exact bag was subsequently sold out in every Kate Spade store in the United States. In instances like these, the accelerated consumer culture that social media platforms like TikTok provide offers a great way to popularize certain items and gain quick fame for a brand.  

In the long term, influencers can help brands gain a substantial younger audience. In order to gain a more professional perspective on this, I spoke to the associate manager of global marketing strategy for Kate Spade New York, Elisa Fenter. I discussed with Fenter how Gen Z influencers like Emma Chamberlain, Dixie D’Amelio, and Addison Rae all work with various fashion houses, but in different ways. More specifically, we talked about how Emma Chamberlain has been a reliable marketing source for Louis Vuitton.

“You have Emma Chamberlain noted as an example which is great. I personally think Louis Vuitton is doing a great job of staying true to their brand while also engaging with a Gen Z audience by working with Emma,” Fenter said.

However, the use of social media influencers can also have an adverse effect on consumers of fashion. Young Tik Tok stars like Chase Hudson, Addison Rae, and Tayler Holder wear high-end, luxury fashion brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton. These influencers appear as relatable to many teens, making their fashion choices also seem accessible to those who do not know much about fashion, when in reality these brands are too expensive for most people. This causes two downstream effects. First, young consumers start to normalise uber-expensive clothing, which in the long run hurts those who cannot afford luxury pieces. Second, it makes these influencers the faces of these brands to young consumers. This may ultimately spoil the history of these fashion houses, as young teens begin to associate Chanel with Dixie D’Amelio instead of Karl Lagerfeld and Miu Miu with Addison Rae instead of Miuccia Prada. 

On TikTok, there is also a “dupe” trend of purchasing goods that look exactly like luxury items but are really knockoffs at much cheaper prices. People post TikTok videos of the fake Gucci belts they purchase and the websites where other users can find them. This enforces an up-and-coming trend of teens not caring about the quality or historical significance of luxury pieces; they just want the status symbol of the “double G” logo. In my opinion, this encourages an inauthentic, disingenuous side of capitalist fashion. 

Ultimately, those in the luxury fashion industry have existential questions they need to answer when moving forward with marketing strategies in the 21st century. “I personally believe that luxury brands will have to engage with Gen Z consumers in order to build awareness and capture lifetime customers. Brands will have to balance maintaining their current brand fans while also acquiring younger more digitally active ones as well,” Fenter added.

In balancing the relationship between young consumers, new social media platforms, and high fashion culture and history, fashion houses need to decide whether to embrace progressive trends of fashion communication or ardently stand by established traditions.