The 10 Italian celebrities that influenced the most shopping online during the lockdown

COVID-19 has been the first real shared experience of the globalized world. As it was predictable, the web has been the most used escape for anyone who was forced to stay at home, nonetheless, the best solution to put up with the lack of physical contact: from online classes to smart working, many of our everyday life activities and occupations have gone online, so that the fashion industry was almost forced to put together the first digital fashion weeks. Many celebrities used their social accounts, especially Instagram, to keep their audience entertained: influencers have become an integral part of everyone's daily routine and continued to call the shots in terms of trends and online shopping. 

Lyst, the largest search engine in the fashion industry, has monitored 100 Italian personalities who have influenced researches and trends during the lockdown and analyzed the way with which they contributed to the purchasing behaviour of people who search, navigate and buy fashion items on more than 12.000 e-commerce and online boutiques. Finally, it selected the 10 Italian celebrities who have been the most influent during the lockdown: From Giorgio Armani to Jo Squillo, going through the Ferragnez and Bobo Vieri, in some ways the results are surprising. 

Giorgio Armani has been the most influent fashion celebrity of the quarantine. Since he decided to close the doors of his show, during the 2020 Milano Fashion Week, his radical attitude did not go unnoticed: a few weeks later, he also wrote an open letter to WWD in which he expressed his doubts on the fashion system, opening the doors for many of his colleagues and designers who complained about the same habits. Furthermore, he was one of the first fashion designers to fight the virus: he donated € 1 million and 250 thousand to Milan's hospitals and converted his industries to the production of primary goods for doctors and health workers. The result? Online researches for the brand in Italy had a 172% increase in April, compared to March. 

In the second place, Chiara Ferragni and Fedez used their influence to do some good: in a few days, they raised more than €4 million to help the construction of a new pavilion for San Raffaele Hospital in Milano. During the lockdown, more than 100.000 researches have been made to find the Versace bathrobe worn by Chiara and more than 20.000 for her Louis Vuitton furry slip-on. The peak was registered when she launched her capsule collection with Champion, with +3,800% researches for the brand. 

Among the many other celebrities who have been central during the lockdown, there was Jo Squillo, who entertained her public with Instagram live streams and DJ Sets; she reached more than 152.000 people (including the Ferragnez themselves) and influenced the demand for paillettes dresses, whose research reached +24% compared to the months before. In the same way, Diletta Leotta, who spent the quarantine showing her followers how to workout, helped the increase of the demand for tracksuits: +24% compared to the rest of the year.

Sometimes, brands have been influenced by the stars, too. The Jacquemus hat worn by Alice Pagani, for example, after she published it on her Instagram account registered a peak of +26%; the Etro t-shirt (not for sale) worn by Carlo Cracco for the Milano Never Stops campaign led to +15% types of research for the brand; as well as the yellow adidas tracksuit worn by influencer Paola Turani led to +9% in the few hours after she published the picture. Following the release of Ghali's video Un passo alla volta for the YesMilano campaign, in which he is wearing a neoprene black face mask, many users searched “maschera nera Ghali” on many e-commerces.

Finally, many other celebrities used this opportunity to sponsor their products. Christian Vieri, who has definitely become an influencer (he has now more than 2 million followers on Instagram), has increased of +19% the supply of t-shirts from his latest brand Y E S. Nico Vascellari, the artist who is friends with Rick Owens and who made himself known with his online instalment Do You Trust Me (which featured the participation of many artists, from Marina Abramović to Benedetta Porcaroli and Carine Roitfeld), led his fans to search for the funny t-shirts that he wears in his posts: +28,4% and one of the most-searched keywords in the past few months has been “t-shirt artista vascellari”.