Luxury brands have long used celebrity PR to encourage consumers to lust after their brands. For fashion PR the business of who is sitting front row is what draws media attention. Stars score big pay days to sit front row with perks of freebie clothes and accessories. The celebrity and the luxury brand both partner to increase brand awareness.
Cash for celebrities, it transpires, has long been standard practice. So when you spot Rihanna sitting in a fashion show, what you don’t see is the £60,000 she has reportedly been handed in return for the favor.
Beyonce, her fellow A-List pop star, is said to attract a similar wage, while the more penny-pinching labels might secure American actress Chloe Sevigny for a mere £40,000.
During London Fashion Week, different houses battle it out for an estimated £100??million spent on orders during the six days of events. With around 100 shows taking place, competition is fierce for coverage in the next day’s newspapers.
This year, the most notable example of this was Burberry’s show, which saw its front row packed with a host of well-known faces including Alexa Chung, actor Jeremy Irvine and model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
Mulberry also saw its show splashed across websites and papers after it boasted a celebrity-filled front row including stars from ITV drama Downton Abbey.
Counter-intuitively, however, it is understood that neither of these shows paid for the celebrities to attend. So how did they pull it off?
So do you think that seeding celebrities in the front row at fashion shows really work to build credible PR ? I wonder is this sustainable publicity or just fluff.
1 Comment
So jealous of these seats. How amazing it would be to sit in the front row. Though I cannot imagine the pressure to dress the part and show your best.