Platform for success: how TikTok has made one shoe brand the hottest on the planet

theguardian.com:

You might think that unfeasibly high, pumped-up platform boots by the London-based brand Naked Wolfe would only enjoy niche appeal. At first glance, they look more at home with Camden’s cybergoths or Catwoman wannabes than the mainstream.

On Wednesday it was revealed that the six-inch “Spice” platforms are officially the hottest item in the world, according to fashion shopping app Lyst. Each quarter, Lyst releases a “heat” index, ranking the fashion products that have generated the most sales, searches and views within its app, as well as social media engagement worldwide.

So how does a £300 Y2K-style Glam Rock boot that isn’t exactly suitable for the school run or office drinks hit the hotspot?

The answer may be TikTok. The video-sharing platform has “levelled the playing field”, said Katy Lubin, Lyst’s VP of Brand and Communications.

“What we’ve seen is lots of smaller niche brands entering the conversation. The fashion industry has always had a gatekeeper community,” Lubin said, recalling the iconic ‘cerulean’ scene in The Devil Wears Prada. In an acerbic monologue, editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly – a withering Meryl Streep – explains the traditional trend trajectory to her fashion-refusenik assistant, played by Anne Hathaway. The colour of her “lumpy, loose sweater … was selected for you by the people in this room”, Priestly says. Trends, she explains, are decreed by one small circle of fashion editors, and the rest of us are powerless to resist.

That was until TikTok changed the game. “That linear trajectory has been upended,” said Lubin. “Having this platform where people are free to post their own style has given different voices more sway with what becomes popular – the cycle has never been so unpredictable.”

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