More than ever, fashion’s popularity hinges on its capacity to wed itself to the prevailing kings and queens of mainstream entertainment: the stars of cinema and TV, music and sport, as well as the digital world’s scrappier but no-less-adored luminaries. By doing this, fashion itself is behaving increasingly like – and being widely perceived as – another form of mass entertainment. As such, when it comes to vying for attention, the average fashion mega-show now tussles with all the big guns: Oscars night, the Super Bowl half-time show, royal weddings, Hollywood blockbusters, Netflix’s latest streaming sensation, stadium pop… And it often wins. ‘Today, digital impressions of the big shows are measured in the hundreds of millions,’ veteran fashion-show creative producer Alexandre de Betak points out on page 164. ‘Pharrell’s debut Vuitton show surpassed a billion – that’s an eighth of the planet.’
