The World's Leading Cities For Fashion

Fashion Week kicked off in New York City this week. And shoppers in cities across the world celebrated Fashion´s Night Out  yesterday. So it’s a good time to look at the world's leading cities for fashion and fashion design, places with a disproportionate impact on what gets made, admired, and sold.

The Global Language Monitor  (GLM), a media-analytics company based in Austin, Texas, released this year´s rankings for the top fashion capitals of the world yesterday (see the table below). GLM’s rankings track language usage from the Internet, blogs, and news media, as well as social media platforms such as Twitter.

London, England, tops the list for the second year in a row, besting New York which lost the spot in 2010. GLM’s fashion director, Bekka Payack, explained that “London's two-year run has been has been propelled by the confluence of two rather extraordinary circumstances: the emergence of the former Kate Middleton as a top fashion icon, and the recent completion of what have been hailed as an extremely successful Summer Olympics.”

Fashion At The London Olympics

Barcelona tops Paris for third and Madrid is fifth, giving Spain two cities in the top ten. The United States also has two top ten cities, with Los Angeles taking ninth place, as does Italy, which has Rome in sixth and Milan in eighth. Italy is the only country with three cities in the top 20 (Florence is in 16th place).

Of the 55 on this year’s list, Antwerpen, Belgium, saw the biggest gain, climbing 33 places from last year to take 11th place. Mexico City, ranked 22nd last year, fell to 47th place in 2012, the largest loss.

The Top 20 Fashion Cities.

2012 Rank	City	2011 Rank	2011 to 2012 Change
1	London, England	1	0
2	New York, U.S.	2	0
3	Barcelona, Spain	7	+4
4	Paris, France	3	-1
5	Madrid, Spain	12	+7
6	Rome, Italy	13	+7
7	Sao Paulo, Brazil	25	18
8	Milan, Italy	4	-4
9	Los Angeles, U.S.	5	-4
10	Berlin, Germany	10	0
11	Antwerpen, Belgium	44	+33
12	Hong Kong, China	6	-6
13	Buenos Aires, Argentina	20	+7
14	Bali, Indonesia	21	+7
15	Sydney, Australia	11	-4
16	Florence, Italy	31	+15
17	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	23	+6
18	Johannesburg, South Africa	41	+23
19	Singapore	8	-11
20	Tokyo, Japan	9	-11

It's interesting to note the ascendance of London and New York to the top ranks of fashion, beating out the established centers of fashion and fashion design, Paris and Milan. London and New York rank as the world's leading financial centers and most economically powerful cities. What this seems to reflect is a shift in fashion away from historical centers of cutting-edge design and to the large markets, related industries, and global affluence found in these two superstar cities.