Key Takeaways
- Fashion influencers and street style icons: Fashion bloggers have become indispensable at fashion weeks and are attractive cooperation partners.
- The top fashion influencers in Germany in 2023 include Lisa and Lena, Stefanie Giesinger, Leonie Hanne and Caro Daur.
From fashion bloggers to mega-influencers, the fashion industry as well as the creation and marketing of trends have changed significantly due to the participation possibilities of social networks. At first, the photographers turned to the social media personalities and the street styles they presented before the important shows of the fashion weeks, today the influencers sit in the front row of the shows.
Many of the fashion influencers we know today have followed the same path, evolving with taste and trend awareness from unpaid blogs to true fashion icons that sponsor posts. Many of the well-known personalities have an enormous reach in 2023 and are therefore, attractive cooperation partners for fashion brands. The rise of fashion influencers is mainly due to Instagram, but Pinterest has also made some of today’s fashionistas big.
Top 4 Fashion Influencers in Germany in 2023
In these top ten fashion influencers in Germany in 2023, we look at influential personalities on Instagram in particular. As mentioned earlier, the platform’s traditional visual focus plays a crucial role in the rise of fashion influencers.
Kolsquare-Insight: For these top 10 fashion influencers in Germany, we have only included influencers in the classic sense, that is, those who have built their fame through social networks alone. Thus, celebrities like Heidi Klum, although they have many followers and great influence in the scene, do not appear in the top 10.
1. Lisa and Lena
Unlike the other influencers in this top 5, Lisa and Lena have not built up their following via Instagram, but via TikTok since 2015. In the following year, they had 10,000 followers, as the twins not only focus(ed) on German content but also sing mainly English-language songs in their Lipsync videos. Then in 2017, the now 21-year-olds released their first single, “Not My Fault.”
In March 2019, they “broke up with Tiktok,” in the Stern interview Lisa commented as follows: “In the end, we just lost the fun. Then, when the app was sold, we realized it was time to do something else and move on.” With a great audience comes great responsibility, both realized that early on. Accordingly, they would advise their followers to be themselves: “Especially at our age, many people struggle with that. They ask themselves: Who am I? Then we want to say: No matter who you are, be yourself! You are not alone in this.”
Today, Lisa and Lena have 19.2m followers on Instagram and cooperate with ghd and fashion retailer NA-KD, among others, with whom they even launched their first own collection. Networth Spot estimates their net worth at $69.29m.
2. Stefanie Giesinger
Granted, Stefanie Giesinger won Germany’s Next Topmodel in 2014, but the real success came with her skillful staging on Instagram. After winning the casting show, Giesinger graced the cover of Germany’s Cosmopolitan but did not renew Günther Klum’s two-year contract with the model agency ONEeins Management. Today, the top model has five million followers on Instagram and is under a contract with the model agency “Muse Model Management” in New York and represents brands such as L’Oreal.
For the past five years, the model has also been marketing her own cosmetics brand called “МОЙ” (pronounced moy), which is a Russian name that means “mine”. She is primarily committed to sustainable fashion with her fashion brand “nu-in” and has even appeared on the big screen, including her role in the Matthias Schweighöfer film “The Nanny”. Her fortune is estimated at €2.5m.
3. Leonie Hanne
Hamburg-born Leonie Hanne now has 4.5m followers on Instagram and has become famous primarily with the platform and her blog ohhcouture. She still runs her blog today but under her own name. Before starting her business in 2016, the 29-year-old studied business administration at the private Hamburg School of Business Administration (HSBA), then fashion while working as a strategy consultant for the Otto Group.
While the majority of her followers come from the U.S., she is now one of the most important fashion influencers in Germany, as Cosmopolitan writes, and works with luxury brands such as Dior, Louis Vuitton and Valentino.
In an interview with the online magazine Grazia, she reveals that her success on Instagram was linked to her timing and authenticity. She is silent on her net worth, stating only that it depends on factors such as the brand, the market and the project.
4. Caro Daur
German blogger and influencer Katharina Caroline “Caro” Daur has 4.1m followers on Instagram. In an interview with the weekly newspaper “Die Welt” in 2016, the Hamburg native said, “Sometimes I have to pinch myself to understand that I’m allowed to do this. That I’ve come this far. I never imagined it could be like this.”
When she started photographing her outfits and sharing those images online on Instagram, she was still studying business at the University of Hamburg but interrupted her studies when her career really took off. So she started with selfies in summer dresses, but then increasingly professionalized herself, among other things by adding English captions to her pictures. In addition to Instagram, the now 28-year-old also writes a blog that has around 250,000 readers a month and is also popular as a fitness influencer. Since October 2019, for example, she has been publishing workout videos on YouTube and wrote her e-book “Daur-Power” with a three-month fitness program.
After the first awards, for example, the “New Faces Award” of Bunte in 2015 or the “Idol of the year” of About You in 2017, Daur worked with brands such as MAC, Calzedonia or Peek & Cloppenburg. Today, she sits in the front rows of major fashion shows in Paris, Milan or New York. Networthspot predicts a net worth of $11.07k for Daur in 2023.
In summary, established fashion influencers, those who started posting photos of their outfits in the early days of Instagram, cooperate with luxury brands, while new stars on the social media sky cooperate with brands that their target group afford.