At the outset, Studio Paillette was built around a circular fashion approach centred on a curated wardrobe of standout pieces. The platform was born from a simple observation: high-quality creations, often expensive, remain largely inaccessible, while many striking pieces from past collections go unsold. Rather than encouraging additional production, the project offers a new way to access fashion: a demanding, financially accessible selection that enhances existing pieces and optimises the lifespan of resources.
Around this B2C rental activity, a community of talents gradually took shape. Photographers, content creators and art directors come to borrow pieces for their shoots and naturally post on Instagram or TikTok. By observing the value of this content for brands, Studio Paillette evolved its model. What began as a creative ecosystem has become a genuine B2B offering for brands.
Today, Studio Paillette positions itself as a “one-stop shop” for micro-influence in fashion, halfway between a showroom, an influence agency and a circular fashion wardrobe. In this interview, Geoffroy Germano, Managing Director of Studio Paillette, looks back at this evolution and explains how the brand transformed a rental platform into an influence agency designed as a contemporary extension of press relations, serving micro-communities and a more responsible model.
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First, it’s important to clarify that Studio Paillette has two activities.
The historical activity is fashion rental, the B2C website that is currently live. We select pieces from runway shows or hidden gems from previous collections. These are beautiful pieces that have already been produced and deserve a second life.
This proposition naturally attracted talent. They borrow pieces for their shoots, publish content and tag the brands on Instagram and TikTok. We realised that this content has real value. That is how our influence agency activity was born, with a website defining the B2B offer launching this week.
I often describe our model as a PR agency 2.0.
We have a showroom at La Caserne in Paris, an eco-responsible fashion hub. Brands leave a drop of 20 or 30 pieces there. Talents come in person, borrow the pieces, create looks and produce content. Collections are not presented by brand but mixed by universe, by theme, with a styling approach. This stimulates creativity.
There is no imposed brief. Talents are completely free. They use the pieces as a resource to feed their own universe. They publish only if they want to. If they do publish, they tag the brands.
We therefore provide brands with UGC and visibility on engaged accounts.
This is not gifting. The pieces are loaned, they come back, we recondition them and they go out again. Brands do not have to manage shipping, returns or follow-up. Many tell us they manage their micro-influence themselves with platforms, shipments and internal time. It mobilises significant resources, especially in fashion where products have a cost.
With us, they deliver a selection and we handle the rest. It is indeed a one-stop shop for micro-influence.
There is also a strong circular dimension. After their time in the influence showroom, the pieces move down to the rental boutique. They continue to create value by reaching a new clientele. In France, a purchased garment is worn on average five times. With us, it can be worn 60 to 70 times.
Let’s be clear: customers come first and foremost for fashion. But they appreciate being able to combine desire and budget while lightening their carbon footprint. And that is exactly what we are trying to do on the B2B side as well: offer creative and effective micro-influence, designed within a circular and sustainable logic.
We are not a talent agency and we do not take commission on their collaborations.
Talents come because they find a creative resource with us. New brands, new ideas, a curated selection. There is also fashion credibility associated with Studio Paillette.
Studio Paillette’s founder, Léa, was a stylist at major fashion houses such as Marc Jacobs and Balmain. She studied Fashion Design at Parsons School in New York and Saint Martins School in London. The Studio Paillette project itself was incubated within the IFM Entrepreneurs programme. We have real legitimacy in art direction and trends. Our Instagram account is highly followed, particularly by talents themselves.
Over time, we have built a community of around 500 talents who have already come to the showroom and published content. We meet them in person at the showroom. We organise events, Fashion Week invitations, upcycling workshops and shooting sessions. There is a real sense of community.
Sometimes brands ask us to connect them with a talent for a paid campaign. In that case, we facilitate the introduction. But that is not our main business model.
We know our community. Some talents are committed artists, aspiring designers, feminist activists or advocates of slow fashion. We know who to entrust with what.
Conversely, the brand must accept a degree of letting go in order to allow more authentic content to emerge, far from ultra-standardised formats such as face-to-camera unboxings with perfectly calibrated messaging.
We advocate for a model of organic, authentic and more creative content creation, generating stronger engagement potential and, ultimately, more sustainable and qualitative commercial impact.
UGC is becoming increasingly important. Brands are rebalancing their budgets towards micro-influencers because they see that communities are more engaged. We observe engagement rates between 7% and 10% for our talents, for example.
There is also a capillarity logic: covering more communities, multiplying touchpoints.
I see a strong trend towards co-creation of content, followed by paid media that amplifies content that is already organic and performing well.
There is an aspiration for that, yes. Brands talk about ambassadors, annual contracts, monthly retainers. But in reality, it is complicated.
Budgets fluctuate. In fashion, if a collection sells well, there is money. If it sells badly, budgets are cut. Mid-sized brands have irregular cycles.
Yes, major fashion houses can secure four-year contracts with three VIPs, but that requires a solid financial base.
Moreover, I am always struck by how quickly some macro-influencers move from one knitwear brand to another. You can question how the community perceives that.
At our scale, we encourage brands to build relationships over time. For example, if they organise an event during Fashion Week, we recommend that they be present in the showroom several months beforehand, so that the community can appropriate their products. Otherwise, we too often see talents come to the event, take a photo, collect a gift and leave after fifteen minutes.
When we organise an event, talents stay. They talk, they dance, there is a real atmosphere.
Brands have a legitimate expectation of performance and impact on sales.
But influence primarily works at the top of the funnel: awareness, consideration, image. If you do not work on the top of the funnel, there will never be anyone at the bottom.
Affiliate marketing is a trend, but in French fashion it can be perceived as too commercial. Adding tracked links to every post does not really align with our DNA or that of our talents.
However, we do have interesting indicators. A Danish brand told us that traffic from France to its e-commerce site had increased by 85% since the beginning of our collaboration.
We also track the growth of brands’ social communities. Some more structured brands have brand lift tools, but that does not fall directly within our scope.
In fashion and lifestyle, I see a real opportunity in amplifying physical events.
Brands invest heavily in runway shows, trade fairs and presentations. But digital amplification is not always on par.
We dress talents from our community and send them to shows. They create content before, during and after. This multiplies the impact of an investment that has already been made.
Creating purely artificial content is expensive. A physical event, on the other hand, is already rich, authentic and desirable raw material.
Major fashion houses do this very well. Mid-sized brands still have room for improvement.
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, offering a data-driven solution that empowers brands to scale their KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing strategies through authentic partnerships with top creators.
Kolsquare’s advanced technology helps marketing professionals seamlessly identify the best content creators by filtering their content and audience, while also enabling them to build, manage, and optimize campaigns from start to finish. This includes measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors.
With a thriving global community of influencer marketing experts, Kolsquare serves hundreds of customers—including Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, Lush, and Hermès—by leveraging the latest Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning technologies. Our platform taps into an extensive network of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers across 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat.
As a Certified B Corporation, Kolsquare leads the way in promoting Responsible Influence, championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations that inspire positive change.
Since October 2024, Kolsquare has become part of the Team.Blue group, one of the largest private tech companies in Europe, and a leading digital enabler for businesses and entrepreneurs across Europe. Team.Blue brings together over 60 successful brands in web hosting, domains, e-commerce, online compliance, lead generation, application solutions, and social media.
Brands can implement several strategies to minimize the environmental impact of their influencer marketing efforts:
Implementing these practices can lead to more sustainable influencer marketing campaigns.
The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, aims to limit global warming to well below 2°C, with efforts to stay within 1.5°C. By measuring and reducing the carbon footprint of influencer marketing campaigns, organisations contribute to this global goal by decreasing their greenhouse gas emissions. This alignment demonstrates a commitment to international climate objectives and aligns with CSR principles and goals.
Influencer marketing contributes to the digital carbon footprint through several activities:
It is difficult to find global data to answer this question. However, French research from 2022 shows that if current trends were to continue without intervention, the carbon footprint of digital technologies could increase by 60% by 2040, potentially accounting for up to 6.7% of the nation's carbon footprint.
To align with global climate objectives, emissions from the broader digital sector must be slashed by nearly half by 2030, according to the World Bank, which says the sector is headed in the right direction as a leader in renewable energy adoption, accounting for 60 percent of renewable power purchases in 2021.
The digital ecosystem is estimated to contribute between 2% and 4% of global carbon emissions through various channels:
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Kolsquare has partnered with carbon impact business solution Sami to develop a calculator capable of aggregating the emissions produced by various elements of the creation and diffusion of an influencer marketing campaign. To function correctly, it requires input of data such as number of KOLs in a campaign, gifted products, travel and accommodation, electronic equipment, type of content produced, and so on.
The planet is heating up fast—global temperatures have already risen by 1.1°C, and if we don’t act now, we’re on track to exceed 1.5°C within the next two decades (IPCC, 2023). The digital industry, including social media and influencer marketing, is a growing contributor to global carbon emissions. While we often think of sustainability in terms of manufacturing or transport, the reality is that every like, share, and video view comes with an environmental cost.
Measuring the carbon footprint of influencer marketing campaigns is the first step to understanding the environmental impact of digital activities. By quantifying emissions from content creation, data storage, distribution, and related processes, organisations can identify areas to implement more sustainable practices, thereby reducing their overall carbon footprint. By tracking emissions, brands and agencies can pinpoint areas for improvement, adopt more responsible practices, and make their campaigns both impactful and sustainable.
Influence has power—let’s use it responsibly. Start measuring the carbon footprint of your campaigns today and let’s drive change together.
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