In Paris, Fashion Is Back—And So Are the Crowds

Fashion shows have returned in Europe, though the scene is not quite the same. With fewer members of the fashion set traveling, attendance at shows has been whittled down to the double digits in some cases.

But while the audience inside the room is getting smaller, the opposite is happening outside the shows: Fashion Week is drawing huge throngs of onlookers outside venues. “I don’t think we ever saw such big crowds at the shows,” Acielle Tanbetova, Vogue’s street style and backstage photographer, told me. “The scene was very lively, especially during men’s, with dozens of young fashion enthusiasts at every show.”

The celeb-ification of fashion is an obvious draw; as stars like J Balvin, Pharrell, Jeff Goldblum, and Ye with his new paramour (and fashion star in her own right) Julia Fox continue to reappear at front rows, so will their fans line the streets outside. Louis Vuitton, anticipating a crowd, built red carpet-style risers for locals to watch arrivals at the late Virgil Abloh’s last show. Outside of Glenn Martens’s Jean Paul Gaultier debut, the streets were so packed with onlookers, cars couldn’t pass. Of the paparazzi trailing Ye and Fox, a publicist said, “it was a frenzy, almost scary, actually.”

But it’s not just the celebrities drawing people to the streets outside of shows. As fashion’s influence grows, a new generation of fans is taking fashion-watching into their own hands. Powered by thriving fashion discourse on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, Millennial and Gen Z commentators are making the street scene the story. “This is clearly Generation Z, documenting everything they do and see, while cheering on TikTok stars just as much or even more than celebrities like singers or movie stars,” says Tanbetova. “Maybe it’s the feeling that the pandemic is almost over (let’s hope!) that inspired these youngsters to go out.”

Consider it definitive proof that phygital just doesn’t cut it in the content creator age. And evidence that who’s inside the show, maybe, doesn’t matter as much as it used to now that a new guard is telling fashion’s stories in their native language: selfies, sharing, and street style. Will it continue? We have four weeks of womenswear shows coming up in February. Stay tuned.