All right, let’s talk about celebrity fashion for a minute. For every trailblazing Zendaya sweeping up awards season surprises styled by Law Roach, there are forty-nine other actresses wearing nearly identical nude swimsuit dresses in the hopes of trending on Instagram instead of actually starting conversations about fashion. I’ve manned enough crowded media risers outside award shows over the years; shoving photo journalists aside and awkwardly yelling “WHO ARE YOU WEARING?” as glamorous actresses run past me to get back to celebrating with their fellow celebrities, all while trying to snap clean photos of their dresses; to know that celebrity fashion can be kind of exhausting at this point.
Don’t get me wrong, I still live for the time a household celebrity rolls out onto the red carpet and completely nails it by taking a risk (girl crying over Nicole Kidman’s Balenciaga masterpiece at the Met Gala). But after over ten years writing about celebrity style I’ve learned a hard truth: If you want to know who’s actually influencing fashion in 20 24, it’s rarely coming from the biggest celebrities with the millions of followers and all the endorsement deals. Actual fashion influence these days comes from the outskirts of fame; the supporting actresses instead of Hollywood heavyweights, independent musicians instead of pop stars, and community figures who aren’t quite household names but have intense followings within their respective communities.
These people are feeding into the brains of stylists, models brands’ dream about dressing, and ultimately trickling down into how regular people take fashion risks of their own. Around three years ago, I first realised this when interviewing Simone (full name withheld for anonymity purposes), a luxury department store buyer. “Ice-T?
Nick Cannon wears our jeans,” she deadpanned before laughing. “But listen, if you really want to know who sells clothes in Hollywood….” She went on to explain that celebrities can get someone in the front door with a see-now-buy-now collection, but if a famous person isn’t wearing somethingauthentic to their personal style viewers will ultimately toss it into a dresser drawer and forget it ever happened.
When I asked her who sold the most clothing on her racks, she scoffed. “You know who sells clothes though?
Funny enough, it’s rarely the A-list celebrities you think,” she replied. “Trust me. Nina, that girl who was on Shrill ?
She’ll buy three dresses on a shopping trip. So will Andrea Riseborough. We sell to actors, not celebrities..” Something clicked in that conversation that led me down a rabbit hole of discovery about where true celebrity fashion influence lies.
Enough talking, who are the real celebrity style influencers of 20 24? These are the famous people who will be secretly dictating your wardrobe options six months from now: Take actress Talia Ryder, who will likely only ring a bell if you’ve seen her in an indie film everyone’s talking about or were sadistically bored enough to catch that new Air Force Ones remake. Odds are you haven’t heard of her.
But trust me when I say the fashion industry has been closely watching her red carpet appearances; specifically her hiring of stylist Jessica Willis about two years ago, for game-changing potential. She’s been consistently mixing vintage Jean Paul Gaultier with indie designers along with deadstock Hermès shirts and high fashion menswear pieces in a way that’s seriously impacting how celebrities approach red carpet dressing. One thing I will say about Ms.
Ryder: she’s always available for interviews. When we sat down for coffee at a film festival in March she was wearing vintage Comme des Garçons I accidentally stared at for a full minute because she looked like a cloudy foam was slowly swallowing her whole. “I wear things that make me feel emotions,” she candidly told me over a club soda at the film festival’s cocktail party after-hours event. RuPaul was grabbing pictures from party-goers at the centre of the room. “I don’t know what emotions, but that’s my vibe.” Same, Talia.
Same. Fast forward three months, and that cloudy fashion vapour appeared on a luxury brand’s runway during their resort show. Now, perhaps stylist Jessica Willis pulls from her closet without giving her credit (many celebrities do this, which is why you’ll notice I never use anonymous sources in my reporting).
But you better believe her stylist linked up with that designer months ago. I have friends in high places. Award-winning producer Joshua Omaru Marley has never cracked the US music charts, but the London-based DJ and producer has been on fire in the streetwear world for the past year-and-a-half.
Between his expertly-curated mix of vintage tailor-made suits with high-tech outerwear, tabi socks, and jewellery from up-and-coming designers out of Tokyo, Marley has influenced how literally thousands of cool men dress on the daily. Need proof? I asked three different menswear designers who influenced them lately and Joshua Omaru Marley popped, unprompted, into each of their feeds. “We always look at his Instagram for inspiration,” the designer at one label raved. “He’s sort of our gay Bruce Springsteen fantasy of what would he wear from our collection?
Honestly, if Joshua wouldn’t wear it….HELP!” Unlike many celebrity fashion icons, all of these tastemakers built their fashion bona credits by not giving a damn what brands think they should wear. They wear “looks,”Stylesuits if you will,” because they authentically care about clothes and express themselves through their wardrobe choices. Their style is personal to them, which is why we pay attention.
Similar vibes from actress-turned-filmmaker Sasha Kumar, who has seriously garnered a cult following after years of slaying with her effortless combination of South Asian textiles with American vintage clothing inspired by her deep love of 1970s workwear. The LA-based actress hands down has the best style Instagram out of any celebrity I follow, but you’d never know it by her follower count. When I interviewed her back in October over herbal tea in Greenpoint, she had just 143K followers.
Two months later? Over 200K. Even still, that’s pocket change for someone like, say, Bella Hadid.
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Yet brand after brand reaches out to Kumar to wear their clothing off-set because they respect her personal as hell aesthetic. When she wore a vintage Kenzo jacket with hand embroidery accents to the After Blue premiere party in October, three fast fashion brands put out nearly identical versions of the jacket by February. “I hate taking pictures,” she laughed to me when I asked why she still dresses so fiercely if she’s not into the spotlight. “But I love clothes and what they say about you before you even open your mouth.” This answer echoed through many under-the-radar style celebrities when it came to discussing how they feel about personally influencing mainstream style. The irony.
Joshua Omaru Marley, Talia Ryder, and Sasha Kumar all know this. So do musicians YOU’VE likely never heard of (unless you’re reading this from inside the bubble) like London-based singer Temi Oni and her bias towards nineties minimalism mixed with West African printmaking and vintage archival Haute Couture garments. I spoke with a publicist for a luxury brand at Paris Fashion Week who explained that when choosingmusicians to wear their designs to shows, “We land on people who actually get it.
Like, Temi actually understands these clothes. She’s not wearing them because her stylist is getting her commission.” Outside of Hollywood, fashion’s new frontier is coming from creatives whose audiences are passionate but niche. Which makes total sense: with algorithms showing us more and more of the same type of content over time and celebrities becoming exponentially more risk-averse with their personal brands (between controversial political opinions and tracking wardrobe marketing deals, there’s a lot to lose when you “mess up”), true style innovation is now happening on the outskirts of fame.
Celebrities with enough cachet to inspire others to buy clothing without being so famous that taking a fashion risk could hurt their image. Look how many little style tributes I found to blogger/potter/current Trump supporter Lued vieilles photos wrote in one of my earliest interviews about the subject back in 2020. But before style influencers became a trope and instagram became all binary Kardashians and No Face Points, celebrities with fewer followers than your average lifestyle influencer were quietly having a massive impact on the industry.
Take Bryce Ludwig. A ceramicist by day and occasional model, Ludwig had styled the Hermès brand logo shirt with vintage Levi’s 501s and well-worn Repetto flats hundreds, if not thousands, of times before it became the latest viral street style “look” on Instagram thanks to one bikini model with terrible taste and four million followers. By the time masses hit refresh hoping to find their own version of the shirt and trousers combo Baker Miller spouted us to wear, Ludwig had since swapped her beaten-up Levis for bootcuts and was ballin’ on brand rotation shirts basically every corner retailer sold. “The style cycle now is: someone with actual style wears something ; the fashion industry catches wind ; said clothing gets dropped into designer collections and marketed to celebrity stylists ; celebrities wear those designer pieces and randomly earn millions of dollars ; the masses buy knock-off versions as soon as they’re available online,” my former colleague Tyler explained to me over drinks when I asked him about his theory. “By the time Katy Perry is wearing a trend, folks who actually care about style moved on from it six months ago.” This doesn’t mean celebrities don’t have influence.
Because they most definitely do. Florence Pugh will wear a green dress and by Christmas green will be the number one sold dress colour on HauteLook. Timothée Chalamet makes dads everywhere realise boyfriend jeans might actually look good on them.
It’s a system, baby. But there’s a stark difference between having the power to influence what people buy versus what’s actually trendy. Celebrities can make us wear clothes, but they can’t always make us like them.
And right now, those two things are becoming ever so slightly disconnected. “I love our celebrity clientele; they’re amazing,” one luxury brand director told me matter-of-factly the other day over cocktails. “But when we’re thinking about where we want to take our brand? We’re looking at out-there weirdos with barely 50K followers on TikTok who wore one of our samples in a way we would have never considered.” Case in point: Elodie Chen wore this to Ann Dexter-Gordon’s backyard pool party in July. Her friend Audrey posted this to Instagram a few weeks later.
Hailey sent hers back because it was “too big.” One month later, virtually every brand in LVMH’s portfolio had some variation of satin capri pant on-sale. Point being: Sure, celebrities will always influence what we buy. But they’re not always influencing what’s fashionable ; at least not anymore.
Last night, I complimented my friend Beth’s eye-catching vintage Thom Browne blazer at dinner and she laughed. “Oh thank you! I actually ripped that idea off from Nova Chen’s outfit!” Nova Chen? Who the hell is Nova Chen?
Turns out, Nova Chen is an Art School dropout with approximately 30K followers on Instagram who dresses in a way that gets her noticed. By lots of cool people.
Including now, apparently, half of New York’s fashion editor community.
I had to Google her.
Guess who’s inspiration I found floating around in Beth’s closet a few weeks later? You got it.
So who are the celebrities influencing your style these days? I bet they’re not the ones on the cover of Vogue, but rather the talented supporting actress hiding in the corner of your favourite celebrities’ Instagram Story. Give them a follow.
They’ll inspire you in more authentic ways than weekly sponsored apparel posts ever will. And please keep supporting your favourite celebrities’ sponsored wardrobe choices. We need both, equally, to exist.
There’s room for Zendaya and Lued Vieux’s mum in the fashion industry. I just hope you caught who’s actually setting the trends in 2024. Hint: it’s not the person paying your rent right now.
