The Front Row Is Now a Phone Screen, and Tommy Hilfiger Owns It

New York Fashion Week has a new leader on the scoreboard, and it's Tommy Hilfiger. The brand topped the week with $58 million in media impact value, the industry's measure of how much attention a show earns once it leaves the room. The telling part is where that attention came from: close to nine-tenths of the total was earned on social media, not in print or on broadcast. The house built its presence around talent drawn from several markets, so the show was made to reach audiences well beyond Manhattan. It also told its story in the formats people scroll through first, rather than adding them afterward. For a week that has always been judged by who sits in the front row, the result says the audience holding a phone now counts as much as the one in the seats. It also means a New York runway can still set the global conversation when a brand plans for everyone watching from far away. That's a well-run week, and it ended in first place.

With reporting from WWD.