The Top 5 Most Trending Runway Shows of 2018

Here at Vogue Runway, we have a favorite saying: “It’s never not fashion week somewhere.” In 2018, this seemed truer than ever. We posted and reviewed over 1,000 runway shows, not a few of them in the last several weeks, when mega-brands including Chanel, Versace, and Valentino put on co-ed Pre-Fall 2019 shows in New York and Tokyo, and Kim Jones of Dior Men staged his first-ever pre-collection show, to boot.

As newsy as this month has been, we were busy all year. This was a big one for designer comings and goings, with debuts at Celine (Hedi Slimane), Burberry (Riccardo Tisci), and Louis Vuitton menswear (Virgil Abloh), in addition to Jones’s arrival at Dior Men. The industry has become accustomed to—even depends upon—these designer changeovers and the accompanying chatter about who’s in, who’s out, and who’s in the running. Vogue Runway’s numbers bear this out. The labels with the biggest season-over-season gains this year (Google would call them trending brands) were indeed Burberry, Celine, and Louis Vuitton men’s, which came in at one, two, and three respectively.

Tisci, Slimane, and Abloh have star power to spare (though they dispense it differently), but the real test for all three will arrive early next year when they put on their second shows for their new brands. Another Vogue Runway truism: Sophomore collections are harder than debuts. Which leads us to fourth and fifth place on our list; these are occupied impressively not by brand newcomers, but by veterans.

Coming in at the number four spot was Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Spring 2018 Valentino haute couture show. To us, this looks like a testament to the power of celebrity—and to feathers. Frances McDormand wore a spectacular turquoise cape and headpiece from this collection to the Met Gala in May, which kept the label in the news until Piccioli’s dazzling follow-up couture show in early July. Fifth place went to Nicolas Ghesquière’s futuristic Spring 2019 Louis Vuitton show. Ghesquière himself had quite the year: He renewed his contract at LV and launched the biggest collaboration since, well, Louis Vuitton x Supreme with his longtime friend Grace Coddington, then went on the road to promote it. It was at a Metropolitan Museum talk he did with Coddington, Vogue’s former creative director, that he hinted that he may soon launch an eponymous label; when he does we expect to see him on this trending list again.

One note about this ranking: Though all five of these brands experienced massive to substantial gains this year, they’ve still got a ways to go to reach the big three: Gucci, Chanel, and Balenciaga, whose most-seen 2018 shows have racked up more than 10 million Vogue Runway page views each since they were posted. Onward to 2019!

Burberry Spring 2019, 8,728,926 page views

Celine Spring 2019, 8,995,699 page views

Louis Vuitton Spring 2019 Menswear, 6,525,741 page views

Valentino Spring 2018 Haute Couture, 7,038,918 page views

Louis Vuitton Spring 2019, 7,641,211 page views