The New Front Row: Who’s Who at New York, London, Milan, and Paris Fashion Week

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Put aside the fact that the pool of applicants is self-selecting, then hand-plucked a few times over; the average person is significantly more likely to be struck by lightning than to sit front row at Paris Fashion Week in any given year. The front row is fashion’s premier place for mingling and status-signaling. For as long as it has existed, it has reflected the culture, tracking technological, social, and structural change in 35 mm, DSLR, and iPhone.

In the past century, it has transformed from an intimate gathering place for clientele into the manifestation of a growing industry, stuffed with a thickening horde of photographers, buyers, and press. As supermodels put fashion at the center of popular culture, celebrities joined their ranks. When the internet cracked the whole thing open, first came the bloggers and then came the influencers. If all the prior eras of the front row were defined by the appearance of a new group, today’s front row will be remembered for the presence—in equal and escalating measure—of all of the above (and more) at once.

All eyes used to be in the front row. Now, all eyes are on it.

Vogue photographed 35 shows across New York, London, Milan, and Paris to find out who sits in these select seats today—and, crucially, where they’re placed.

The Frow Is the Show

For many brands, the front row has ballooned in size, importance, or both, with return on invite closely monitored. It’s reductive, all things considered, but you can tally up a ballpark price for a front row seat at the biggest shows. If you look at what a brand pays to host a celebrity, it can range from nothing at all to hundreds of thousands of dollars, or, be part of a wider contract. If you math out an average based on the cost of the show, each spot can be figured to be worth tens of thousands of dollars. If you look at what a client had to spend for an invite, you might be back in the six digits. But that’s a little inside baseball. The point is, creating the right front row is a big consideration for brands of any size.

“Today the front row is mostly a stage of its own. It’s where the brand places its ambassadors, celebrities, and talent, plus the biggest content creators,” said Simone Bellotti, creative director of Jil Sander. “So the show becomes a second event happening on the opposite side of the runway.”

“[It] creates a dialogue between the runway and the room,” said Veronica Leoni, creative director of Calvin Klein.

Another way to think about it is akin to the fantastical sets that defined eras past—Karl Lagerfeld’s fall 2014 Chanel supermarket, for example. “Brands used to compete with each other to make the highest-impact show that would bring them press and attention, collaterally to the runway,” says Youssef Marquis, public relations expert and celebrity matchmaker, who formerly led communications at Givenchy and Louis Vuitton. “That’s what the front row is now: How do I make something no one has ever done?”

It’s on the front row that brands display their cultural heft and acuity.

The amount of star power fashion consolidates makes it hard to look away. Where else would you see Bianca Jagger, Jannik Sinner, Donatella Versace, and Cardi B together, besides at the Gucci show? Jennifer Lawrence, Mia Goth, Jisoo, Rosalía, and Anya Taylor-Joy side-by-side, except at Dior? What did Sandra Hüller, Dua Lipa, Ayo Edebiri, Alexa Demie, Pedro Pascal, and Stephen and Evelyn Colbert talk about at Chanel?

For a young brand, having just one mega-celebrity at a show can be a game changer. Fashion insiders were already well aware of Matières Fécales. Now, thanks to the Rihanna effect, so are a lot of other people.

The front row drives headlines. So, getting “the moment,” or the hot young talent of today, and often tomorrow, to a show matters. (Those celebrities, of course, get something out of it too—being present helps to cement their standing.) Last year, there was a race for the Heated Rivalry boys. This year, all eyes were on the Sterling Point, Off Campus, and Shards casts. They ended up being spread across Gucci, Balenciaga, Miu Miu, and more; and it was Dior that snagged Obsession breakout Inde Navarette. But it’s not just the biggest names brands are after; creatives, niche but buzzy favorites, and other talented types are also included.

Any mention of youth merits mention of fashion’s nep-obsession, which was on full view this season. Children of celebrities and industry players were present—including teenagers Faith Margaret Kidman-Urban and Beatrice Santo Domingo, who attended Valentino and Conner Ives, respectively.

Seeing spectators’ reactions to the clothes—or, in the case of Dua Lipa, Pedro Pascal, Kristin Wiig, and Alexa Demie at Chanel this season, to the soundtrack—is part of the fun, and social media editors are positioned to capture it. This season, the world watched Jacob Elordi watch Kendall Jenner walk Bottega Veneta, and noted that exes Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber sat side-by-side for their daughter Kai at Thom Browne. Celebrities who you might expect to see front row walked in the shows, while models sat front row.

The front row can also quite literally be part of the show. There are plenty of examples in fashion shows past: Who can forget the spring 2002 Imitation of Christ show, where the role of editors and models was switched? Likewise, this season, dancers making out at Diesel made spectators part of the performance.

Fashion Is Really, Really Under the Influence

People of the internet and of internet influence are front-row heavyweights. There are your classic influencers, new-wave commentators, sales-driving Substackers, plus a plethora of people who resist—and bristle at—categorization. Each attendee broadcasts the clothes to their slice of the world, and fast.

“Immediately after a runway show is over, I stay seated, edit runway footage directly from my iPhone, and post it to Instagram within minutes,” says Madé Lapuerta who runs the account Data, But Make it Fashion.

That’s changed not just who is there, but also how people encounter shows: on Instagram and TikTok, and likely mediated by their favorite creators or celebrities first. To put it in context: a 20 second clip of stars at Chanel lip-syncing to Adéla’s “Nicole Kidman” with Nicole Kidman has over 6 million views on TikTok, while the house’s runway stream has 4.5 million views on YouTube. Tory Burch excels at activating her frow-goers, dispatching content creators like Tefi Pessoa and Kennedy Eurich as correspondents who saturate social media with guest interviews and interactions.

Stylists—increasingly public personas in their own right—are front row regulars. Moneyed clients have always been a key part of the front row. (Spotted this season across Carolina Herrera, Schiaparelli, Alaïa, Balenciaga, Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent, were power patrons Amy Griffin and Jen Rubio, plus a number of names you wouldn’t know.) Today, those cultivating followers in addition to a wardrobe have eked out more elbow space.

There’s also been a shift toward more global representation. No other group’s presence is as pronounced as the K-pop stars’, whose legions of fans are hard to miss online and outside venues. Actors in massively, internationally popular Thai TV dramas, such as Loewe ambassadors Pimchanok Luevisadpaibul and Tawan Vihokratana, in particular, are also accounted for. “The right ambassador can open an entire market overnight,” says Alison Bringe, chief marketing officer of the platform Launchmetrics, which measures brands’ reach.

At some houses, discretion is a differentiator. The Row famously keeps its clothes cloistered. Dries Van Noten designer Julian Klausner has pulled off a quiet but effective creative transition since taking the helm a year ago; the brand’s front row slots are largely filled with press, buyers, customers, and other industry mainstays—plus, Van Noten himself—many dressed in their own looks by the label, collected over the years.

“There’s a lot of young talents with very small followings who we really love to have in our brand family,” Klausner said on Vogue’s The Run-Through podcast. For the bigger public figures who attend especially, he added: “It’s very important for me that they are not photographed in the room or that they don’t feel they are there for a certain function. I want people to be at the show and to be there because they want to be there.”

Location, Location, Location!

Location, location, location! That old adage is certainly true for fashion’s most expensive piece of real estate. When it comes to the front row, it’s not just about being there, but being…where? As publicist and reality TV star Kelly Cutrone put it on her show Kell on Earth and again to Vogue: “You know where you stand, the seating chart doesn’t lie.”

Today, a good seating chart aims to create pods of energy, says Rachna Shah, chief executive of KCD. “Back in the day, we would think about what creates good energy toward the media pit at the end of the runway. Now it’s much more about each pocket: who is next to whom, who is across from them, and what is the interaction within the group.”

Content creators latch onto specific, sticky moments and the context created by the atmosphere informs coverage, especially for journalists covering the runways with a wider cultural lens. “You have the power in this moment to create connections and conversations,” says David Siwicki, founder of his namesake PR firm. He introduced critic Cathy Horyn to someone who just walked Gucci at the August Barron show, and connected a museum curator and journalist at Hodakova.

Inside the room, relationships and deals are made. Attendance offers a hint at who’s wearing what come red carpet season; and you know whoever is next to the CEO, CMO, or president is worth paying attention to. Outside the room, the right arrangement of personalities next to each other can make an image pop: friends, family, and co-stars side-by-side, or an unexpected duo, for example. “I love when you look across the room and see all these different personalities together–people from fashion, art, film, music, literature, different generations, different points of view,” said Wes Gordon, creative director of Carolina Herrera. “That mix makes the room interesting,”

The Front Row Recipe

A good front row pulls together the right people, placement, and timing, all for 15 minutes of fashion. Different characters are involved: a star with gravitas, an It-girl, an actor on the rise, an eternal icon, and an artist that grounds the room, to name a few. When the front row works, it projects both the creative universe the brand and its designer occupy and the sorts of people their clothes are for. “The front row is a reflection of the world you’re trying to create around a collection, ” said Stuart Vevers, creative director of Coach.

The consensus is: the front row needs to be a little unexpected—but very on brand. It was done right in the ’90s, if you ask Jil Sander’s Bellotti: “Editors next to art students, friends of the studio, people from the neighborhood, a buyer squeezed in somewhere. Everyone was close: benches, people standing, someone sitting on the floor at the edge. You felt the heat of the room, the noise, the bodies around you. The models walked past almost touching people’s knees.”

Today, “when there’s a real relationship between the people in the room and the creative vision of the brand, you can feel it,” says Yumi Shin, executive vice president of global brand partnerships at Nordstrom.

What happens in the front row isn’t meant to stay there. “It often leads to further opportunities,” say designer Priya Ahluwalia, whose invitees include musicians, artists, actors, athletes, tastemakers, and writers. Many of the people in Conner Ives’s seats are there because they’ve already influenced him: “[The people in the front row have] arguably had as much impact on what’s coming down the runway as the team behind the curtain,” he says.

All that said, a front row should be a little bit like a dream dinner party, filled with guests you’d like to have a conversation with.

That, or people whose conversations you’d really like to overhear.

But the thing about a front row is, the good ones have an ineffable quality to them—you just had to be there.