“As a young designer, you’re starting out and your dream is to one day show at fashion week,” says Marcelo Gaia, the designer behind the ever-viral womenswear label Mirror Palais. Marcelo was once one of these hopefuls. Back in 2012, he was studying his craft at New York’s The Wood Tobé-Coburn School. Last year — a decade after his graduation — he achieved that formative dream: his label, Mirror Palais, was staging a runway show at New York Fashion Week. All with a little help from Instagram, of course.
The last year has seen several similar Instagram-based brands make the leap from the grid to the catwalk. Last March, French label Maison Cléo debuted its SS22 made-to-order offering at Paris Fashion Week. The next season, Franco-American brand Miaou followed suit, inviting Paloma Elsesser and Richie Shazam to walk its SS23 show. Last week, Barcelona’s Paloma Wool staged its second PFW outing in collaboration with artist Carlotta Guerrero: a runway performance that brought the backstage to the runway, physically embodying the label’s mantra: “Paloma wool is a project around the act of getting dressed.”
Just when it seems that fashion’s old guard has caught up with the industry’s new Instagram-driven model (see: Heaven by Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu and, now, Burberry under Daniel Lee), the ones who drove that change are suddenly switching up. So, why are these brands making the transition from online to IRL?
Before we dive into the ‘why’, we need to define the ‘what’. The term ‘Instagram brand’ is ubiquitous. But what exactly does it mean? “Before the term was really coined, you were a ‘direct-to-consumer brand,’” says Alexia Elkaim, who founded Miaou in 2016, just before the Instagram brand boom. “That was the language. And I understood it to mean that a brand is controlling its own messaging.” Of course, the term ‘Instagram brand’ wouldn’t exist without the titular social media platform, which serves as the single, defining feature these labels share. Marie Dewet launched Maison Cléo months after she began posting her and her mother’s designs to her personal account. “People wanted to buy [them], so we had to create a website and a brand name.” Maison Cléo was born, @maisoncleo was secured and the followers (now 136k) began adding up. In July 2017, Man Repeller’s Leandra Medine inaugurated the label one of the very first Instagram brands with an article titled “I Just Bought a Shirt on Instagram.”
But the Instagram brand game isn’t just as simple as a DTC model and an @ handle. According to Marcelo, there are three tiers of brands that exist under the label. First, there are the Shein’s of the world (“essentially the Forever 21 of online boutiques”). Then there are the brands that are actually creating original designs (“cutting and selling their own garments”). And then, finally, there are the designers who came up online (“like Kim Shui, Danielle Guizo and myself”), which are distinguished, among other things, by their singular vision and artistry. “We do invest a lot into storytelling, which I think sets [Mirror Palais] apart from other brands that were born online,” Marcelo says, alluding to the label’s seasonal campaigns, the last of which was shot in Italy.
Despite Mirror Palais’ positioning, however, Marcelo notices a difference in the way the industry views his and his peers’ brands in comparison to designers with more traditional trajectories, including the requisite fashion week timeslot. “It feels like the way that some people look at it is, ‘That’s an online brand versus a designer,’” he says. “If [labels] aren’t showing at fashion week, or if they’re not supported by the CFDA or by Vogue, then you’re not seeing them talked about as much in the magazines or the media in a more traditional sense, the way that you would with designers who came up over ten years ago before the online boom.”
Traditionally, fashion shows function as a means to showcase seasonal collections to press and potential buyers. The industry, however, has changed. And for new brands — especially those who came up on Instagram — the fashion show has little real utility. “I didn’t need to do a show,” Marcelo says. “Now, if you have an online platform, you can release a collection digitally, buyers can buy the line and the press are able to see the collection online and write whatever review they want.”
The fashion show, however, serves another, secondary function, which is to signal a brand’s prestige. A slot in the calendar is an industry stamp of approval, an invitation into an exclusive club; it indicates a label is a cut above the rest. And that, in part, is the reason why Marcelo debuted Mirror Palais at NYFW last September. “I wanted to show the world that [Mirror Palais] is a designer brand,” he says. Paloma Wool’s Paloma Lanna corroborates: “I needed to elevate what we were doing by making the project tangible in an in-person experience, too. It was a very important moment for us; we were no longer that ‘Instagram brand’.”
For Marcelo, there was another reason, too: “I’m a born-and-raised New Yorker, and all of Mirror Palais’ clothes are designed and made here. I wanted people to know that fashion is still coming from New York,” he says. “Seventh Avenue is dying… the garment industry is dying, but it does still exist.” Marie, who operates Maison Cléo from a small office-atelier in Lille, France, expresses a similar sentiment. “I wanted to do [a runway show] because not a lot of brands doing Paris Fashion Week are actually made in France, which is something I don’t understand. It was important to show that producing 100% in France is still possible,” she says.
For Alexia, it was about taking Miaou beyond the grid. “When I think of Instagram brands, I think of brands that exist in one place. That’s something I’m really mindful of, and I do try to expand [Miaou’s] ecosystem beyond the internet by hosting dinners or doing a fashion show in Paris, really creating a world beyond the screen.” Instagram was a lifeline, especially to young designers, during the pandemic, when analogue activities were put on hold and shoppers migrated to e-comm and then the app. Now that the real world has opened up, it seems that these screen-bound brands are looking to join it, on the runway and elsewhere.
Staging a fashion show comes with its unique set of challenges, especially for newcomers. Hurdle #1: getting a spot on the calendar. And it’s not easy. “If the CFDA doesn’t put you on the calendar, then you aren’t going to end up getting a Vogue write-up,” Marcelo says of showing in New York. “It feels very exclusive. I’ve also been told by some people it’s a pay-to-play kind of thing. And that gets a little bit yucky because you’re just like, ‘What about talent?’” Both Mirror Palais and Miaou showed off-calendar for their SS23 debut season. For Alexia, it was empowering: “The fashion calendar is so institutionalised,” she says. “I wanted to challenge that. You don’t have to be on the calendar to make it happen.”
Designing a made-for-runway collection also differs from creating a commercial offering. “Our design process was very challenged,” Alexia adds. “Miaou is pretty focused on specific categories. I had to put that aside to paint a picture of a world beyond just merchandising and individual pieces because it’s a runway show and you’re looking at 40 looks.” In addition to crafting runway-ready versions of the label’s signature corsets and trousers, Alexia had to consider “all the elements that support a garment,” designing handbags, jewellery and other accessories as supporting characters.
“When designing this collection and developing the clothes, I wanted to create things that are going to get people to really react and make them excited because it’s a fantasy,” Marcelo says. That meant casting his eye beyond bestsellers like The Supermodel Dress (“an amazing dress to wear and own”, but one that might not elicit a front row reaction) and, instead, looking to larger-than-life showpieces. “There are certain risks that you need to take,” he says. “It was about finding that balance of making things risky enough but still beautiful and timeless.”
While the new guard zigs, the old guard zags. Marc Jacobs, for example, has harnessed the power of Instagram with Heaven, targeting Gen Z consumers with influencer-faced campaigns (Kiko, Gabriette, et al.) and casual photo dumps. In the wake of its viral micro miniskirt, it seems Miu Miu has also gone the way of the Instagram brand, posting more lo-fi, short-form video content, à la TikTok.
With Mirror Palais’ SS23 runway show, Marcelo accomplished one of his personal goals. However, it did little to garner the label the recognition he was hoping for. “I didn’t really feel any support from the old guard or the more traditional media. I was pretty disappointed,” he says of the debut.
There was a — rather significant — silver lining, however. The show was a hit online, going just as viral — if not, more so — than the label’s eagerly-awaited seasonal campaigns. “The cool thing about viral moments is that they’re much longer lasting than the runway show, itself,” he says. “Maybe someone saw an image on Pinterest from two years ago, and then they end up emailing us asking whether the item is coming back in stock. Because, to them, it’s brand new.”
Instagram is replete with these kinds of serendipitous moments, offering opportunity to those who are willing to learn its ins and outs. “I come from Calais, a small city from the North of France and I come from nothing, from scratch, with absolutely no contacts in the fashion industry,” Marie says. Her PFW debut — a watershed moment for the label — was made possible by the democratising power of social media.
“The high fashion world is one thing and the online social media world is another,” Marcelo explains. “I think that the online world is a much more inclusive place. And I’m grateful for that.”
Credits
All photos courtesy of Mirror Palais, Paloma Wool, Maison Cleo and Miaou.