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Just a month ago, “Tube Girl” didn’t exist. Now, she’s not only on the front row at fashion week, but she’s also walking the catwalk. Sabrina Bahsoon, a 22-year-old law graduate, became an accidental star after posting erratic videos on TikTok of her dancing in cool-girl outfits on the London Tube. She now counts more than 580,000 followers on the platform and has become a point of fixation for luxury brands this fashion month, as runway shows become a playground for not just influencers but even obscure internet personalities.
After walking Mac Cosmetics’s “The Face Show” event during London Fashion Week, which was attended by stars including Nicole Scherzinger, Bree Runway and Charli XCX, Bahsoon has arrived for her first Paris Fashion Week. She has already been spotted at Balmain and Courreges, and yesterday evening, walked the runway for Christian Cowan, whose show featured a performance by his partner, singer Sam Smith. On Friday, Bahsoon plans to attend Alessandra Rich, and on Sunday, she will start working with a luxury fashion house to promote its fashion and beauty lines. She will also attend the brand’s show that day.
“‘Tube Girl’ started out as me having fun and dancing while I was on the way to my friends’ house. I filmed myself and really liked how it came out, so I just kept going from there,” Bahsoon tells Vogue Business. “I think it resonates because it shows people that you don’t need to care about your surroundings or the people around you to have fun and be yourself.”
Bahsoon is among a new wave of quirky personalities who have quickly worked their way up the fashion week ranks after a burst of online stardom. Twenty-three-year-old Madeline Argy, TikTok’s fast-speaking chatterbox princess, first gained notoriety as the then-girlfriend of rapper Central Cee but has since won over fans with her quickfire, intimate and, at times, brash videos on TikTok, where she now counts over 4.8 million followers. Her first paid fashion partnership was with Coach, promoting the brand’s recycled bags. This season, she is attending fashion weeks globally for the first time. She sat front row at Proenza Schouler and Tory Burch in New York before flying to see the Prada, Versace, Boss, and GCDS shows in Milan and Saint Laurent in Paris.
Argy is “very surprised” by the public interest she has received. “I definitely didn’t set out with this outcome in mind, and I still can’t really process it,” she tells Vogue Business between the Paris shows. “I think [my approach] resonates so well with young people because we’re so similar. I personally take comfort in content that’s mundane rather than super edited and well produced.” Argy doesn’t get paid to attend most shows but enjoys “getting to know the brands and playing dress up”. She adds: “Doing a full season out helped me realise which brands align with me personally. It was like doing a Pinterest board in real-time.”
Another new fashion favourite is Amelia Dimoldenberg, the founder of the irreverent celebrity interview series Chicken Shop Date, which has hundreds of million views across platforms. Dimoldenberg attended Skepta's Mains fashion show in London with broadcaster Louis Theroux, who sings the viral “Jiggle Jiggle” TikTok song. She was also invited by Gucci to interview A-list attendees at its Ancora show in Milan and yesterday attended the Acne Studios show in Paris.
Fashion bloggers have long since gatecrashed fashion week, but these personalities mark a turning point for who wields influence at shows and who gets to sit front row. Where influencers were thought to replace, or at least supplement, traditional fashion editors, it’s less clear what purpose these creators have at a fashion show. How does a luxury brand benefit from someone who has gone viral for energetic dancing?
In the new attention economy, brands are battling for the greatest number of eyeballs and looking for individuals who offer a different perspective, says Thomai Serdari, a professor of fashion and luxury marketing at NYU's Stern School of Business. Bahsoon stood out because “she did something that was unscripted and funny”, which resonates with younger audiences who increasingly consume fashion as entertainment, she says.
A brand that works with her — particularly before anyone else — shows that it’s in on internet culture as it’s happening. Boss acted quickly, making the decision to get Bahsoon to the show and had her on a flight to Milan within six hours, says Hugo Boss’s SVP of global marketing and brand communications Nadia Kokni. Bahsoon’s presence at the show drove “millions of engagements from around the world”, she adds.
“It’s so much harder to break through all of the noise as a brand,” says Alison Bringé, chief marketing officer at Launchmetrics, a marketing and analytics platform. To connect with local audiences, global brands are taking a “multiplayer” approach, in which they invite individuals from across different lifestyle universes to share ideas and create content in a way that is fluid, open and personalised. The desired outcome? Building cachet by establishing shared values and moments that are bigger than the brands themselves. Brands can do this by putting less of an emphasis on their own polished curated feeds and working with creators to disseminate images and ideas of the brand on their own platforms.
Argy’s appearance at Tory Burch during New York Fashion Week drove $289,000 in media impact value (MIV), more than double the impact of actress Emma Roberts, who drove $177,000 in MIV at the same show, according to Launchmetrics. Prior to the Christian Cowan show in Paris, Bahsoon had already driven $51,000 in MIV through teasers on her social media. These metrics are based on the individuals’ social posts alone and not the wider social media echo that they often generate. “Their appeal is their ability to capture a wider audience,” says Bringé. The truth is the average customer doesn’t even realise it's fashion week, and [these individuals] can help brands target their everyday consumer beyond the front row. They are able to create content that goes a bit further than the insular fashion crowd.”
What about the clothes?
Gen Z audiences want a real-and-raw look at what happens at industry events and the internet personalities who can deliver that are constantly changing, says Kelly Montague, co-founder and director of Axe & Kettle, a luxury marketing agency that has worked with JW Anderson and Nanuskha. “Brands are trying to piggyback off these viral moments and harness the algorithms, which move so quickly, in order to expand the digital footprint of their shows,” she says.
Working with these viral stars can be a double-edged sword. While social media was heralded for helping to democratise fashion and making it available to many around the world, the buzz generated by influencers and celebrities has, in some cases, become louder than the clothes. While the clothing may be the reason for fashion weeks, they are increasingly becoming less of a focal point, experts agree. “Trying to follow along with a show in real-time on Twitter when a K-pop star is attending is the most tedious thing one can do, because why am I digging through 200 tweets a minute of fans posting their love,” wrote internet personality and writer Louis Pisano.
Unlike celebrities and more established influencers, who tend to be ambassadors and have long-term relationships with brands, online personalities may show up at a fashion show but are less likely to be involved across their other marketing touchpoints throughout the year. Their unpredictable nature can also pose a risk for luxury brands. Musician Tommy Cash frequently appears at shows in Milan and Paris, including those by Rick Owens and Marine Serre, wearing ludicrous outfits. For Doublet’s Spring/Summer 2024 show in Paris, he showed up dressed as a seafood restaurant table. His latest appearance at Diesel’s SS24 show in Milan, where he arrived dressed as a homeless person, crossed the line and was viewed as offensive by many.
“By inviting [Cash], no doubt the brand wanted to drive hype, but the publicity didn’t go down well,” observes Axe & Kettle’s Montague. “You don’t want to offend your existing customers and community for the sake of extra reach. I think brands need to be careful about whether it will be worth the payoff, especially if they work with more artistic characters because it’s hard to predict what they’ll do versus someone you might have a more commercial deal with and therefore you have more control over [the situation].” (Diesel did not respond to requests for comment.)
While Cash leverages fashion shows as a platform to showcase his own work, creators like Bahsoon and Argy are more a part of the current cultural conversation, and their presence in the once closed-off echelons of fashion sends a message to their wider communities and fanbases. Bahsoon, for example, is of Malaysian origin and is viewed as a role model for Southeast Asian Gen Zs across the world.
How long can Tube Girl ride her viral fame? Bahsoon has what it takes to withstand “trend culture”, says Boss’s Kokni. “Sabrina was and still is the moment on TikTok.”
But TikTok’s stars are rapidly replenished, and customers can lose interest quickly – especially if they begin engaging in more paid partnerships with brands. “By being invited to these shows, I don’t know whether their strategy is going to become more commercially minded and not just an expression of their creativity,” says Serdari. “People are tired of influencers selling stuff to them.”
Bahsoon and Argy both say they are focused on staying relatable. “I try to just stay in my own lane and do my thing,” says Bahsoon. The priority is building on partnerships with brands that speak to her values and beliefs, she adds.
Launchmetrics’s Bringé advises brands to “find people who are authentic, and that can connect with the audience you’re trying to target. You also hope they would have your best interests because you want to build a long-term partnership. In influencer marketing today, it’s less about discovering someone new but really finding people you can create a lasting impact with.”
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