Thursday, March 19, 2015

Kanye West Beats Out Chanel for Most-Viewed Collection of Fashion Month

Kanye West Beats Out Chanel for Most-Viewed Collection of Fashion Month:

Kanye West at the Kanye West x Adidas fall 2015 show. Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images for adidas
Kanye West at the Kanye West x Adidas fall 2015 show. Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images for adidas
At the end of each fashion month, Style.com tallies up the page views of every collection to determine a list of its top 10 most-viewed shows. Since the site began publishing this list in the fall of 2011, Chanel has come out on top every time — by a significant margin. Last season, Karl Lagerfeld's feminist rally beat out runner-up Dolce & Gabbana by over a million hits. But for fall 2015, Lagerfeld and his Parisian brasserie got beat by someone who'd never even made it to the top 10 before now: Kanye West.

Kanye West x Adidas Originals garnered a staggering 4,578,461 page views, beating Chanel's 3,405,945. You may think, sure, it's Kanye West, he's a huge celebrity. But Style.com also covered West's Paris runway collections back in 2011 and 2012 and they did not get nearly as much pickup. "I knew there would be a lot of interest around the collection, but I wouldn’t have necessarily predicted that it would beat out Chanel," said Dirk Standen, Style.com's editor in chief. "We’ve covered celebrity lines before and we covered Kanye’s first two collections he did in Paris a couple of years ago, but they didn’t have that kind of impact ... obviously he’s at a whole new level of fame now, but part of it is I think there’s a purpose behind his collection that people can’t ignore."

And that purpose is? "I think this idea he has — which is essentially to bring good design to the masses — I do think it’s the right idea at the right time. Obviously he has a lot of things to figure out in regards to pricing and manufacturing conditions and those kinds of things that go along with trying to produce that kind of line, but I do think the idea is valid and timely and I do think people are responding to that." Part of what Standen wanted to get across in his in-depth interview with West after the show (which officially clocked in as Style.com's most read story of all time) was the message behind the clothes. "I felt there was a lot of controversy around the collection in terms of the wait for people to get in and things like that, and I wasn’t sure that the message behind the clothes had come across as clearly to people."

Another interesting newcomer to the list, at a respectable number six, is Gucci, whose new Creative Director Alessandro Michele made his debut in Milan. "One of the goals Gucci had in making this change in creative directors was to get back on people’s radars, and that is certainly one sign that they’re succeeding," Standen said.

But back to Kanye: The rapper cum non-designer gave Style.com one of its biggest traffic months ever. Thanks to the collection post and the interview, which got tweeted by just about every member of the Kardashian family, traffic was up about 95 percent for the month of February. The interview alone garnered over half a million uniques.

While we all know Kanye loves nothing more than to talk about himself, not everyone gets the opportunity to interview him, or post his look book exclusively. "I’ve had a long relationship with Kanye," explained Standen. "We hosted a party together for Men.Style.com...8, 10 years ago. We’ve always had a relationship with him. He’s always been a fan of Style.com. He said one of the ways he sort of learned about fashion was through visiting Style.com."

So does Standen's pal know he's number one? "I may have had a word in his ear," he laughed. "I spoke to him after the show in New York and when we saw how big the figures were, I just sort of told him a little bit about that and said, 'We’ll have to see if Chanel beats you,' so he’ll find out at the same time as everybody else."

We have mentioned a few ways in which we thought Kanye West "won" fashion month, but we guess this makes it official. See the full list of Style.com's fall 2015 results below.

1. Kanye West x Adidas Originals

Page views: 4,578,461

Rank Last Season: New Entry

2. Chanel

Page views: 3,405,945

Rank Last Season: 1

3. Dolce & Gabbana

Page views: 2,905,544

Rank Last Season: 2

4. Valentino

Page views: 2,547,711

Rank Last Season: 4

5. Saint Laurent

Page views: 2,244,004

Rank Last Season: 3

6. Gucci

Page views: 2,102,173

Rank Last Season: New Entry

7. Louis Vuitton

Page views: 2,025,937

Rank Last Season: 5

8. Prada

Page views: 1,996,781

Rank Last Season: 8

9. Givenchy

Page views: 1,933,750

Rank Last Season: 6

10. Dries Van Noten

Page Views: 1,900,555

Rank Last Season: 10

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