What are fashion brands doing wrong on TikTok?

According to Marc Sebastian Faiella, model, stylist and co-founder of Voices4, on TikTok, there's no road to success, but above all there is no brand to imitate, someone who is doing it the right way or who may have given the example. Everyone is simply doing their best. For Celine's SS20 campaign, Hedi Slimane, the brand's creative director, had chosen the very young Noen Eubanks, a TikTok star with over ten million followers, as its new face. However, Slimane's choice had immediately seemed a forced way to enter the platform, trying to make room without respecting and applying that language born within TikTok and that many, from Burberry to Prada, seem to have ignored in their entrance to the platform. On the occasion of the fashion show for the FW 20/21 collection, Prada had reserved a front-row seat for Charli D'Amelio, who from the top of her 100 million followers should have captured the best moments of the show to share them on her personal profile. The beginning of a love story that never really blossomed between TikTok and the brand, which since its arrival on the social network has done nothing but share videos of its fashion shows relying solely on its name. 

Someone who managed to capture the essence of TikTok was Gucci, able to intercept one of the trends that have become viral on the platform and reuse it on its official channels. Started as a mockery of the style of Alessandro Michele's brand, "How to look like a GUCCI model" has instead become a catchphrase in which models wore the brand's items in an ironic way, respecting the language of the social network but above all the now-famous phrase “Don't make ads. Make TikToks". However, Gucci's the only virtuous example in a panorama that sees brands like Ralph Lauren, Jacquemus and Burberry venturing into challenges and behind-the-scenes videos of their fashion shows. The feeling, however, is that of finding oneself in front of a series of attempts by those who feel compelled to be there, to impose their presence in a place that doesn't truly belong to them. With the advent of digital fashion shows, many brands have decided to take advantage of the new digital platforms, from TikTok to Twitch, trying to enter the world of fashion within realities that aren't eager to alternate a digital show with a game on Fortnite. 

If in the beginning, the brands had approached digital platforms in a more direct way, with collections and collaboration with streamers and eSports teams, the next step was to enter that world with a straight leg. A world that lives fashion passively, in a disinterested way or with a world of values ​​far from that proposed by luxury brands. Among the most famous trends of recent months, there was certainly "What I'd wear front row at a designer fashion show" in which some tiktokers showed homemade outfits to wear during the fashion shows of some brands, from Versace and Balenciaga, with an aesthetic exaggerated and deliberately joking. A way to underline the detachment of a world that prefers sustainability or the hauls of shopping done on Shein and that doesn't look favourably on the idea of ​​finding oneself in its feed with fashion shows with clothes and accessories that are unattainable for many. The confirmation then comes from the comments on the individual TikTok, in which the few positive opinions on the videos of the collections and Fashion Weeks are far exceeded by the ironic ones, "They really dug into granny's closet for this one" suggests someone talking about the last one Prada collection, or as real trolls.