Chris Harper — March 15, 2018 — March 15, 2018
Instagram has changed the fashion industry over the last eight years, making lines easier to push by reaching a broader audience. The social media platform relies on pictures and video, so it’s perfect for building your fashion business by showing potential customers your product and giving them an up-close and personal feel for your brand.
How Instagram Spreads the Word
Instagram is a visual platform and each photo or video is an opportunity to showcase your fashion brand right on potential customer’s smartphones. Customers experience the brand with just one click and, with more than 800 million active users, that’s a lot of potential buyers for your product.
Hashtags are used to personalize the brand further, bringing customers into the conversation and inviting them into the experience. It’s like having hundreds of millions of people attend your own personal fashion show, which used to be available only to the elite.
While fashion labels have been on various social media platforms, it’s Instagram with its core strength in visual storytelling that has propelled it into the fashion forefront. ~ Manish Malhotra
Malhotra’s brand showed a 300 percent increase in 2017 alone due to his presence on Instagram.
You Might Be Wondering How Fashion Brands Have Adjusted
The brand Vans is a good example of displaying product in a visual way where every photo is bringing you into a feeling. Every Vans photo on Instagram shows you that it’s a casual, breezy, West Coast, hipster-style brand. There’s no question what the Vans brand is all about and they utilize Instagram to share that product idea with their customer base.
See how it draws you in and shows you exactly what Vans is all about?
Another fashion brand who does this well, by sharing their story is Sabyasachi Mukherjee. He is a jewelry designer whose brand is marketed successfully and exclusively through Instagram. He makes the most out of Instagram videos and images by transporting you into his story and the story of his designs.
Other Changes Due to Instagram
Fashion designers have hired dedicated Instagram teams to push their brands and create the perfect story every time. These teams create the most aesthetically pleasing images, coupled with engaging dialog, to bring the customer to the brand and vice-versa.
On a platform that is so visual, having the right visual combination of model and apparel allows the post to not only sell you a product but provide a beautiful image worthy of a user’s attention at the same time.
Using models to display your product or fashion line is becoming more and more the norm on Instagram. Take India-based apparel company, Haya Creations, who utilize their rich Indian culture for its clothing, models, and backgrounds in every Instagram post.
Contests on Instagram are also a great way for fashion brands to spread the word about their product and an easy way to bring fresh eyes to their Instagram page, increasing viewership and sales. Everybody wants to be part of the conversation and Instagram gives people a voice and a participation level that other platforms don’t.
What’s the Bottom Line
The bottom line for fashion and Instagram is the fashion industry has re-adjusted itself to fit this way of communicating to its customers with no sign of changing back.
Even if Instagram were to dismantle tomorrow, fashion brands would find another platform similar to engage clients because this is now what customers are responding to and responding well. It’s a more personal way to do business and it’s easier through pictures and video to sell a feeling on top of selling a brand.
When you have a business and you’re selling a brand, your bringing people in and sharing an experience with them. It’s intimate. In the fashion industry, you’re sharing an intangible quality of how this person or that person is going to feel in your brand and what their life could be about.
Through pictures and video on Instagram, you’re selling a dream. This form of communication is the now of fashion and the future of fashion.
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