How Fashion Styling, Marketing, and Public Relations will Help Your Brand in 2024
London Fashion Week, 2023, Fashion Scout.
It’s time to revamp your brand
Happy 2024! ‘Tis the season to begin fashioning the life you want to live.
Fashion can be competitive. You may wonder why your beautiful works are not generating the sales you need to grow. The reality is, many designers are extremely talented, but without the right strategy in place, their sales may not produce what they need.
You probably already know the importance of fashion styling, marketing, and public relations for a young brand. 88% of consumers consider digital product content essential when making a purchase. It’s been drilled into your head that you need the right attention and focus on your brand. However, without a holistic approach to styling, marketing, and public relations, the seams of your strategy could come undone.
Fashion Styling, Marketing, Public Relations… Oh my!
Fashion brands are no longer competing for their designs and artistry; it’s also for space in the online world. Technology has been a great eqaulizer for many artists and designers. Now you can pick up your phone and instantly connect with a world of fashion and opportunities. I have personally experienced this when I got scouted to style and model at Paris Fashion Week in 2023 through Instagram. Berlin designer, Vivien Sophie, saw my fashion posts and immediately sent me a DM that would change my life and career.
This was not random but the result of a holistic approach I was employing for my own fashion brand:
I was styling and designing my own work over the years, taking feedback from leading fashion professionals I trusted.
I was employing digital marketing tactics on my posts. Using an ad spend of 20-30 dollars for four ads targeting European fashion capitals and professionals.
I was developing a name for myself in Toronto and London, using public relations techniques to get my heeled foot in the door.
If I focused on styling, marketing, and public relations as separate entities, I may not have been scouted. This is why it’s important not to approach your styling, marketing, and public relations strategy as separate. All three aspects need to come into play when branding.
Styling your Fashion Brand to the Nines
I love working with designers and passionate artists as a stylist because it all comes back to a key aspect I believe in: collaborating over competing. Stylists are like matchmakers who help connect talented designers to models, actors, influencers, and stakeholders who need to stand out and blend in with the crowd. Stylists also work to make sure that everyone gets what they want. The designer’s pieces are shown in the best light, and the talent is able to express themselves beautifully.
Styling has a direct connection to marketing and public relations. It’s why the first thing Joan Rivers (RIP) asks on the red carpet is, “Who are you wearing?” That is advertising, marketing, and public relations at its finest. It’s the stylist who marries each aspect together to make sure everyone is left with dazzling results.
If you are a young brand, it’s important to connect with stylists who can offer opportunities to get your designs shown to a wider audience. If you are a young artists who needs to attend events like the Junos, Paris Fashion Week, and TIFF, it’s important to get a stylist who understands media attention. The right outfit leads to media attention, the right media attention can lead to career opportunities.
However, fashion styling alone cannot work without a robust digital marketing and public relations strategy.
Refashioning your Digital Marketing
It’s out with the old and in with the new when it comes to digital marketing. Digital marketing is fast-paced and like with fashion, I’m constantly learning and evolving. I started my career not as a stylist but as a digital marketer, helping young brands find their legs with SEO, social media, content marketing, and funnel marketing.
Digital marketing is where I see most improvements needed for young fashion brands. It’s a not an easy feat to be a designer, businessperson, CEO, CFO, HR representative, AND digital marketer. Feeling like you need to both create and market your creations can feel like bailing water out of a sinking boat. Instead, realize that the water you’re in doesn’t need to be an ocean. With the right current, you can set sail to brighter horizons.
You need to first understand the strategy behind your digital marketing. This is why I offer free 30-minute consultations to fashion brands and artists where I show them a 3-month plan with SMART goals. This goes over what digital marketing strategies are needed to make your brand succeed and the measurable goals we need to track progress.
It can be easy as a young designer brand to follow what a larger fashion brand is doing in digital marketing. But I’ve seen many brands lose momentum when they try to boil the ocean. It’s better to get one’s feet wet and find the right channels that can lead to a loyal and engaged audience.
Your brand now has the correct styling and digital marketing to showcase your talents. Now it’s time to reach out and witness the magic of public relations.
The Power of Public Relations
You’ve created beautiful designs that are styled correctly. You’ve revamped your social media, email marketing, and website to be in line with your strategic goals. Now is the perfect time to begin integrating public relations. Public relations can be a buzzword that is often misused and misunderstood. Every brand I know wants the traditional PR route: to get featured in Vogue, Elle, Glamour, and various news sites. But even with these features, what value does that bring your brand?
Public relations gives your brand an identity of its own. It’s like sending your child into the world and helping it develop its own legs. Whether it struts or falters is entirely dependent on the public relations strategy you develop. For a young designer, it can be difficult to break through the glass ceiling in the fashion world. That’s where fashion public relations becomes crucial.
Fashion public relations is not only getting your designs featured in big magazines. It also includes:
Influencer partnerships and marketing. Leveraging influencers who are on-brand with you and can direct their audience to your products.
Creating meaningful relationships with journalists and stakeholders. I’m not talking about mass-sending press releases either. Press releases are important, but real PR magic happens from genuine connections with the media.
Creating positive sentiment with the public through charity, activism, and purpose. Now more than ever people want to know the why should I care behind your brand.
The why is where a public relations specialist comes in handy. In 2020, I was able to orchestrate a winter market in Hamilton, helping over 50-vendors survive and thrive during COVID-19. I did this because my client, sustainable fashion house Ushi Mart, wanted to be a liaison to help their local community. This is the why behind their brand. Ushi Mart is not just about creating cool streetwear, it’s about community building. With this why, I was able to get the market featured in 4 major publications, radio shows, and influencers through earned (where we don’t pay) media. The PR for this market led to two sold out weeks, helping 50 artisans and vendors during COVID-19.
Investing in public relations may not produce instant results right away, but it can be the story of the turtle versus the hare. Helping your brand sustain growth and recognition over time, so that one day you reach a point of no return, and it culminates to success.
Fashion Styling, Marketing, and Public Relations are One
Fashion equals marketing, marketing equals fashion. Besides his controversies, I have always respected Karl Lagerfeld for not being just a great designer, but an even better marketer and publicist. Karl knew that good design would not be enough to take Chanel out of the slumps it was facing in the early 70s. He used unconventional methods at the time to generate press and marketing with key stakeholders. Helping to cement Chanel’s legacy in the 80s and 90s and changing the world of fashion forever.
If you can take one thing from this blog, it’s to never view your fashion styling, marketing, and public relations as seperate. They all need to work together to bring results your brand needs.
Fashion styling is needed as you need beautiful and on-brand outfits to sell your designs. You need the right connections to get your designs and brand to the top.
Fashion digital marketing is needed because you need the right channels in place to funnel new audience members to your social media, website, or email campaign.
Fashion public relations is needed to nurture relationship with media stakeholders and get brand recognition that can turn into a legacy.
I take pride in the years of marketing and public relations I have. It’s what has given me opportunities to finally work in fashion as a stylist, designer, and model like I’ve always dreamt of. But I still love marketing and public relations. Now, I want to help brands like yours cement their status in fashion. The puzzle pieces for success are all there. You just need the right person to put the pieces together.
Want to see how I would put the puzzle pieces together? Book a FREE 30-minute consultation with me.
Let’s discuss how styling, marketing, and public relations can help you meet and exceed your goals in 2024.
