And now, the main event…

For a content creator, there are few drugs as potent as the serotonin rush of K-pop fan engagement. Whenever I release a report that features a K-pop star on Style Analytics, my Substack devoted to fashion trends, I know that the comments and shares are about to explode. The same phenomenon appears to be evident in the luxury fashion market. Take last year’s Fall-Winter season, when Dior reportedly generated $88 million in earned media value (E.M.V.) on Instagram and $51.6 million on Chinese social media platform Weibo, thanks to partnerships with Asia Pacific talent such as Orm Kornnaphat, Lingling Sirilak Kwong, and Blackpink’s Jisoo. The engagement spike feels great—at least until you glance at the comments and realize that almost all of the attention is on the stars rather than the brands they’re promoting.

Sure, hand-wavy metrics like earned media value and media impact value (M.I.V.) can help justify the enormous budgets behind runway shows, celebrity appearances, and ambassador deals. (Jisoo’s Dior ambassadorship, for example, is estimated to earn her between $10 million and $20 million annually.) But media value is obviously not the same as retail value. So how much of that attention is actually converting into sales? I recently pulled some data for a little clarity on the true efficacy of these ambassadorships, and uncovered that the posts featuring a K-pop celebrity averaged a 1 percent engagement rate—calculated as total post engagements divided by total follower count. That’s actually not bad: The average engagement rate across all posts in my analysis was just 0.2 percent. K-pop engagement also sat well above the rates for other types of celebrity posts, which averaged between 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent. As expected, K-pop stars also dominated earned media value and media impact value rankings.

When K-pop partnerships do produce public sales, however, they tend to be limited releases customized to the star, and relatively accessible. The South Korean singer and actor Jennie Kim, from Blackpink, developed a Calvin Klein capsule that reportedly sold out in one second and generated $8.6 million in M.I.V. Vogue Business also noted that her Gentle Monster collaborations have consistently sold out. Meanwhile, her bandmate Rosé’s Tiffany Lock Rosé Edition, a capsule inspired by the star, sold out within minutes of release.

The same logic holds as you dip even further below luxury pricing: G-Dragon’s PEACEMINUSONE x Nike sneakers, customized around his signature daisy logo and retailing around $180, sold at roughly three times the retail price on the Korean resale market. (His earlier Air Force 1 Para-Noise collaboration reportedly sold out within hours.) Another recent example is Jung Kook’s Calvin Klein capsule: The brand launched the capsule in May, and management called it the most successful collaboration to date, citing 99 percent sell-through on Tmall in China and a complete sellout at the Los Angeles pop-up. Parentco PVH even discussed it during their latest earnings call. Indeed, K-pop partnerships actually perform best when the product is near-entry luxury—think eyewear, fragrance, small leather goods, charms, sneakers, caps, and jewelry capsules. The effect is compounded when fans can instantly identify the item and the connection with the star: Jennie designed this, Jung Kook wore this, Rosé inspired this, etcetera.

Despite those lucrative endorsements and all the attendant buzz around them, however, there’s not enough evidence to suggest that K-pop stars convert luxury consumers. In my own perusal of EDITED Retail Data, which names the products being stocked and selling out across retailers worldwide, the picture was much less conclusive. When I looked at products promoted by K-pop stars, there wasn’t any reliable sellout spike that jibed with social media trends.

Take the fandom-generated excitement around the butter yellow Chanel Preppy Coco bag that Kim wore to Chanel’s Spring-Summer 2026 show. After she wore the bag in October, the sellout rate had risen only from 1 percent to 2 percent by December—basically negligible when you consider how Blazy-mania increased the sellout rate for yellow Chanel bags to 7 percent back in May. There are similar patterns within the data. Jimin of BTS was spotted wearing the Dior Normandie tote in February, but the sellout rate declined from 40 percent in October 2025 to 17 percent this May—despite all the fan videos claiming that everything these stars wear sells out for the brands. The absence of a visible EDITED sellout spike doesn’t prove that fans didn’t buy. Luxury sales can also happen through boutiques, regional allocations, waitlists, clienteling, duty-free, brand D.T.C., or private appointments. But it does suggest that the story is more complicated, and the R.O.I. far less conclusive, than many marketers would like to believe. In this sense, K-pop stars are more like distribution infrastructure: They can max out the metrics you need to report back to your C.E.O., but whether that attention translates to revenue depends on whether the brand has given the fandom something to grasp on to.

The E.U. is doing all it can to minimize Chinese-imported fast fashion in the region. [Financial Times]

Embattled Harvey Nichols will be sold to Frasers Group, Next, or Modella. [Sky News] Primark is going on a price-cutting spree. [Reuters] Phoebe Philo will always be fashion’s top choice. [Magasin] Yael Aflalo is still a Net-a-Porter girl. [WWD]

Until tomorrow, Lauren

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