French Federation claims quarter-billion-euro Media Impact Value for 2021 events in Paris

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Apr 30, 2021

The Federation de la Haute Couture et de la Mode released estimates on Friday revealing that collectively all its official catwalk seasons in Paris so far in 2021 scored a Media Impact Value (MIV) of nearly a quarter of a billion euros.

 
Working with its partner Launchmetrics, the fashion and beauty Franco-American data analysis group, the Federation revealed that including all the 188 officially listed events in Paris this year on Federation schedules the MIV totaled $242.92 million.
 
The Federation, French fashion’s governing body, included all three catwalk seasons staged in Paris, including menswear, staged from January 19 to 24; haute couture, January 25 to 28; and women’s ready-to-wear, March 1 to 10.

This year, due the pandemic, almost the entirety of the three seasons took place online. In the March ready-to-wear season, the most important single runway week on the planet in terms of brand power and ideas, there were only two small live shows with strict socially distancing.
 
Nonetheless, Launchmetrics estimated the MIV for the women’s ready-to-wear season at a whopping $132 million, testifying to the continued global pulling power of the Paris season. The haute couture season’s MIV was €71.4 million; and the figure for menswear was €39.5 million.
 
In recent years, the Federation has worked hard to expand its coterie of international media partners, a network which now includes Google, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Canal+, The Asahi Shimbun, Kommersant and CNN. Parallel to that, it has developed a strong presence in China, via link ups with Weibo, Tencent Video and We Chat, allowing Paris Fashion Week to be reach a massive, and frequently youthful, international audience.
 
All told, 170 houses, both long-time Federation members and invited guest houses, posted their shows, videos, live streams and fashion flicks on the extended global network.

 
“The content of Paris Fashion Week and Haute Couture Week benefited from unprecedented international amplification which, in addition to the measures implemented by the Houses, has bolstered Paris not only in its role as the capital of fashion, but also as the digital capital of fashion,” insisted the Federation in the release.
 
By Launchmetrics' estimates, fashion events in the three seasons attracted 467,000 visitors; 1.5 million pages views and 354 million views of video content, over 95% of it on YouTube.

"Paris has proved itself to be the capital of digital Fashion Weeks," Michael Jais, CEO of Launchmetrics, told FashionNetwork.com. "Indeed, we are lucky to be in a city that is not only known for their savoir-faire and design, but one that also knows how to create experiences and an emotional connection with the audience — this is the key to generating brand performance: impactful, memorable brand experiences.

"The figures include the Chinese market, however the top countries remain to be France, followed by the US respectively with more than double the Media Impact Value.

"As brands begin to understand the Chinese social media landscape and learn to leverage their owned media channels abroad, we can expect this number to grow as the Chinese consumers are at the forefront of brand strategies today," he concluded.