The Alphabet of Fashion 2023

A Guide to All Creative Directors

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The year 2023 is about to come to an end, but fashion continues to move at an incessant pace. Technological advancements in the textile and digital fields have allowed the fashion industry to take giant leaps, experimenting in both ateliers and online with marketing and artistic strategies capturing audiences worldwide. Phenomena that have gone viral on social media in the past twelve months have not only influenced brands and their creative direction but also their revenue, confirming the increasingly cohesive bond between the internet and reality. Today, trends and aesthetics emerging among the youngest TikTok users carry the same media weight as images captured by paparazzi during Paris Fashion Week. In an era where everything can be reality, yet nothing is truly, fundamentally real, and consumers are bombarded daily by new micro-trends, we have attempted to provide clarity, narrating through data what will remain of 2023. Thus, Fashion Alphabet is born, an ABCs tracing the most followed trends of the past year according to the results of our report.

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Fashion Alphabet examines the landscape of contemporary fashion emphasising the most significant phenomena on Instagram and TikTok. The report involved a thorough study of over 10,000 posts published between January 1, 2023, and October 31, 2023, carefully selected by the nss editorial team. To highlight the most relevant topics, the most popular hashtags and mentions on the platforms were extracted and then measured based on the total number of likes to create a sentiment-based ranking. On FashionTok, over 5,500 videos were analysed to complete a granular mapping of the most followed moments. Our Fashion Alphabet fully reflects the dynamism that has characterised the world of fashion in 2023, a true time capsule that will retain its value even years from now.

CREDITS

Text nss magazine / Information Designer and Data Analyst Emanuele Ghebaur / Graphic Design Aurora Guantario / Editorial Coordinators Elisa Ambrosetti, Edoardo Lasala / Web Development Brownie

In 2023, AI's potential became mainstream. The hashtag #AIfashion reached 43.1 million views on TikTok, with Google searches experiencing a +300% growth. On Instagram, content saw a significant boom from the beginning of the year: 8.3 million interactions and 11,000 cross-platform posts, a +360% increase compared to 2022. This surge occurred despite Elon Musk's continued emphasis on its dangers.