DO YOU FASHION, BRO?

As the number of male fashion influencers swells, we look at what's driving this trend.

- AARON KOK

By now, influencers are a dime a dozen. We've seen every kind out there: the fashion-focused girlies taking over fashion week front rows, the kid-fluencers tumbling into the next family-friendly pop-up, even IVF-luencers documenting their personal fertility journeys for the world to consume.

And in 2024, there's another growing group: the male fashion influencer.

At a recent dinner party, I was introduced to an influencer marketing director who commented that in the past six to eight months, she's noticed an uptick in male content creators and influencers dipping their toes into the fashion scene.

These guys aren't just putting together cargo pants and tank tops, mind you, but they're actually ordering tons of clothing from online stores and exploring their own personal styles to find a way to differentiate themselves from all of the other fashion bros on Tik Tok.

I left the dinner thinking that there is some truth to it. On Instagram Reels, I find myself interacting more with male fashion content at a greater volume than I used to a year ago. Whether I liked or disliked what they wore was irrelevant, because it became impossible to escape them especially when you're sucked into an algorithm-driven loop.

"We've definitely seen more male fashion creators trying to establish themselves, especially on a platform like Tik Tok," says Evangeline Leong, who founded the marketing agency Kobe and runs influencer marketing campaigns for the likes of Uniqlo and Pepsi.

"As a platform, Tik Tok embraces the idea of discoverability over relational following, and this has opened audiences up to creators outside of their immediate network. Therefore, it also gives potential creators a bigger playing field to dabble with."