Do Red Carpet Appearances Impact Designers’ Sales?

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A star can utter an unfamiliar name into the microphone and erupt millions of Google searches. Or an established house like Armani, Versace, and Valentino can worm into the back of the viewer's mind, nestling there until they think about which designer they should wear to their own personal Oscars.

We looked at the five award shows with the most watched and talked about red carpets — the Oscars, the Grammys, the Screen Actor Guild Awards, the Golden Globes, and the People's Choice Awards — from the past three years and found out what label every female celebrity wore to the event.

Using three different metrics, we tried to answer the question: Is there any sort of positive correlation between "who are you wearing?" and an annual report that puts a smile on investors' faces?

The Most Worn Designers

Armani has a comfortable lead over other designers. The label has become the go-to for many celebrities living out their grandest award show fantasies. Washington Post fashion critic and red carpet expert Robin Givhan specifically remembers a conversation she had with actor Cuba Gooding Jr. "In his fantasies about going to the Oscars as a nominee, he was wearing Armani," she tells Racked.

"So, I think for some brands, like Armani, like Valentino probably, these very well-known houses that are known for their connections to grand events, there are probably some performers who are drawn to them because it's part of the fantasy."

Armani is living up to this reputation and still collecting a wide range of celebrities. In 2015, it was worn by an eclectic group that includes Naomi Watts, Iggy Azalea, and Beasts of the Southern Wild's Quvenzhané Wallis.

All this success on the red carpet has not led to the giant types of returns you might expect, though. While sales are rising, according to financial reports in the Fashion Times, revenue growth actually declined sharply from 16% in 2014 to only 5.7% in 2015.

Valentino, tied for second here, is another interesting case study. The storied house was bought by Qatari group Mayhoola for Investments in 2012. The very next year, 2013, Valentino dressed an astonishing 11 celebrities — more than any other label in a single year from 2013 to 2015. Maybe not so coincidentally, revenues almost doubled that year, according to WWD.

But here comes the bucket of ice water: Valentino's interest in the red carpet waned after its blockbuster 2013 and the label only dressed five and two celebrities, in 2014 and 2015 respectively. Meanwhile, its sales continued to do gangbusters. Revenues skyrocketed 36% in 2015, according to WWD.

Then there are examples like Donna Karan and Gucci which completely rebuke the theory that doing well on the red carpet translates to fatter wallets. Donna Karan is tied for ninth in red carpet appearances over the past three years but to say the label has hit some rough patches during that period would be a massive understatement. Since 2013, the label's founder and namesake stepped down and the entire Donna Karan collection was shuttered in order to focus on the money-making DKNY, which is now helmed by Public School founders Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chao.

Gucci, which is just above Karan, only recently turned its sales around. Their dirty secret is dressing fewer celebrities (only two) in 2015 than it did in both 2014 and 2013.

So did the Oscars, the granddaddy of award shows, have an impact on sales? Here are the designers that showed up most at the Oscars between 2013 and 2015.

Although some of the brands jump spots here, it's still impossible to peg this directly to positive sales growth. However, it does speak to certain designers being stingy about loaning dresses out for award season.

The Designers You'd Expect to See, But Don't

Looking at the most-worn designers brought us no closer to figuring out whether or not red carpet appearances affects sales. This brings us to a look at some extremely well-known designers who didn't put up the red carpet numbers we expected, to see if this affected revenue negatively.

One of the most shocking of the bunch is Moschino. Moschino designer Jeremy Scott's rolodex is filled with more famous names than the credits of Ocean's 11 and yet he couldn't find more than one person to wear his dresses. Really? BFF Katy Perry couldn't have busted out an out-there Scott designs for even one People's Choice Awards? Despite not popping up on the red carpet, the Wall Street Journal reports that sales were climbing halfway through 2015.

Balmain and Balenciaga are in similar places. Both Balmain's Olivier Rousteing and recent Balenciaga designer Alexander Wang presumably have a number of friends they could call to walk their dresses down the red carpet. However, each only had two from 2013 to 2015. Sales continued to grow despite the low amount of red carpet appearances.

Iconic luxury house Chanel is also minting money as fast as it can print off interlocking C's, according to Bloomberg. Calvin Klein similarly didn't find itself in the red after not making it onto the carpet as often as you'd think the label would.

This could be due to more elite labels being pickier about who is allowed to wear its dresses. "I think that it's smarter for brands to be more judicious in their red carpet hits," Givhan says.

"I don't know that a brand like Armani or Burberry or Chanel is suffering from a lack of brand recognition." Burberry was only worn twice from 2013 to 2015, but revenues continued to rise ever so slightly heading into the tail end of 2015.

So, Is It About Quality or Quantity?

Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

The correlation between sales and red carpet appearances so far seems to be nil. However, maybe it's the choosy labels who are the smart ones. Perhaps the real question is: Why get a dozen people to do what just one Beyoncé can?

In the past three years, Beyoncé has been particularly generous when it comes to wearing designers outside of the traditional names. One would assume this would be incredibly helpful for smaller brands. "If the stars align perfectly, it can really benefit a little known brand," Givhan explains.

In 2013, it seems like the stars were going to get into Formation when the Queen Bey wore a black and white jumpsuit by the designer Osman. But since Osman isn't owned by a public conglomerate like LVMH or Kering, it (frustratingly for the purposes of this research) doesn't have to report sales.

However, when speaking about other celebrities wearing his clothes, designer Osman Yousefzada told The Telegraph, "When you're as small a business as I am, that kind of exposure doesn't always translate into sales." And if you'll accept relevancy as a very crude indicator of sales, Google Trends will tell you that Beyoncé's appearance in Osman didn't have a long-lasting effect on the brand. Search for the brand spiked in February 2013 when Bey wore the jumpsuit, but not even the BeyHive could keep the brand from plummeting in the search index by May, just several months later.

Beyoncé gave a similar bump to former Project Runway designer Michael Costello, who she wore to the Grammys in 2014. According to Google Trends, Costello got a huge bump when the Grammys aired in January 2014. There hasn't been that much interest in Costello since, but the designer has hung on to some of the relevancy Beyoncé blessed him with.

We can finally put our "positive correlation" stamp, which had been gathering dust up until now, on one big name and designer, though. When Rihanna wore that fluffy pink Giambattista Valli dress to the 2014 Grammys, the Internet meme-ified and spread the image, along with the Italian designer's dress, to all corners of the Internet. A year later, Valli told Italy 24 that his label had grown 18% in 2014. Slide a W in the quality over quantity argument! But without more examples to speak of, it's hard to say this is more than an isolated occurrence.

In Conclusion

Looking at the past three years and the resulting sales, it appears that red carpet appearances don't have an appreciable effect on designers' revenue. The most difficult thing about translating this type of success into bigger sales is that oftentimes celebrities' red carpet dresses are one-offs or cost such an exorbitant amount of money that there may as well only be one in existence.

Celebrities have the benefit of borrowing clothes, so dressing stars for the red carpet may be more of a long game for designers than just three years of data can reveal. While certain brands will continue to leverage the immediate gains that come after a celebrity wears a more attainable garment —€” think Michelle Obama's canary yellow Narcisco Rodriguez dress that immediately sold out — red carpets aren't going anywhere and will continue to serve an ultimately different function.

"I would never say that the red carpet has lost its allure," Givhan says. "On the red carpet, whether it's the Academy Award or the Met Gala red carpet, you're not just selling a dress, you're selling this entire notion of a fantasy."