Today, Instagram released its year in review data, and besides the heartwarming revelation that #love was the most-used hashtag of the year, there were some interesting fashion-specific stats in the mix.
Take, for example, the fact that a day during Paris Fashion Week, October 1, was one of the top 10 Instagrammed days of the year, coming in seventh, and the only fashion-centric date on the list. Other dates that made the cut, for context, include Halloween (which topped the rundown), the anniversary of 9/11, Election Day, Father's Day, and Easter Sunday.
"There’s the fact that Paris is so darn Instagrammable, period, but there’s also the amazing street style and creativity, obviously, of the collections there," Eva Chen, Instagram's head of fashion partnerships, told Refinery29 of why PFW likely accrued such a flurry of 'gramming, and why it was the only fashion week to make the cut.
She cites Olivier Rousteing and Riccardo Tisci as doing a "a great job of sharing their day-to-day," and also pinpoints Dior's presence on the platform's Instagram Stories as a highlight during the PFW spring 2017 shows, thanks to celeb cameos like Jennifer Lawrence and Natalie Portman, and the debut of Maria Grazia Chiuri's designs for the house.
The platform also tracked the top 10 fashion accounts that gained the most followers in the past year, and that list is incredibly model-heavy. (Can't say we're shocked.) Gigi Hadid topped the roster, gaining a whopping 16,033,757 new followers in 2016. (Her total following currently clocks in at 25.9 million.)
"We've seen Gigi's career really flourish on Instagram, because she takes her followers on this amazing journey as she shares career milestones in a truly authentic way — from her partnership with Tommy Hilfiger to walking in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show for two consecutive years," Chen said. "She’s her true self, and that shows."
Hadid's impressive spike in followers was followed, consecutively, by Cara Delevingne, Hailey Baldwin, Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, Victoria Beckham (the sole designer on the list), Chrissy Teigen, Gisele Bundchen, Taylor Hill, and Candice Swanepoel.
The platform also tracked the "top diversity moments" of 2016, a compilation of posts that generated mainstream interest on Instagram throughout the year. These included diverse castings at shows like Christian Siriano, Eckhaus Latta, J.Crew, and Tome. The list also included Instagram's own #RunwayForAll campaign, featuring plus-size model Clémentine Desseaux, blogger and amputee Mama Cax, and gay model Shaun Ross, who has albinism, among others.
For Chen, these moments are indicative of the platform's growing user base internationally: 80% of the 500 million total instagrammers are actually located outside the U.S. "As our global community grows, so does the desire for people to see people who represent their unique beauty perspectives on Instagram, whether that’s natural hair or modest fashion or the millions of other definitions of beauty that exist," she said. "Instagram allows each person to craft their own ideal of what fashion can be, and that’s a beautiful thing."
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