Ones To Watch

The chic women influencing our wardrobes; and this season’s bold trends 

For most of us, it starts in school and those first attempts at trying to work out whom we would like to be. There’s the undeniable draw of that girl: with artfully tousled hair and perfect skin, she stood out among an assembly of fidgety teens for looking completely comfortable in her skin. If she flat-ironed her hair, you knew that next week everyone else would too. If she bought cigarette-cut jeans, you might find yourself in a fitting room that Saturday considering a pair, perhaps to capture some of that effortlessness for yourself. That same girl spent her Saturdays watching Love Story and studying the cover of the Ramones’ Rocket to Russia to get her inspiration. The power of influence over our style has always been strong, it’s just that these days there’s a business behind it.

According to studies conducted late last year, 70 per cent of shoppers say they look to independent bloggers, friends and family for inspiration. Eighty-four per cent of marketers said they would launch at least one influencer-led campaign in 2017, and nearly 40 per cent of Twitter users say they’ve made a purchase as a direct result of a tweet from an influencer. This wave of influencers may not be household names, but they hold sway over their dedicated followers, who obsess over every look they wear — think Chiara Ferragni (8.6 million Instagram followers) Aimee Song (4.5 million), Kristina Bazan (2.4 million) or Danielle Bernstein (1.6 million). An influencer with 1.5 million followers can charge about $90,000 per Instagram post.