Lancaster claims its fashion moment with a sharp, creator-powered Paris Fashion Week strategy

About Lancaster: French leather goods with a renewed fashion edge

Founded in Paris in 1990, Lancaster is a contemporary leather goods brand known for quality craft, timeless design and accessible luxury. As the brand evolves, it aims to reaffirm its place among modern Parisian women — those who appreciate style, versatility and beautifully made handbags they can rely on season after season.

The challenge: from sporadic visibility to a structured, fashion-driven influence strategy

Historically, Lancaster’s brand’s presence in influencer marketing existed in flashes. The brand enjoyed strong momentum thanks to several successful product co-creations, which generated spikes of visibility and excitement around the brand. These collaborations proved the appetite for Lancaster’s designs and confirmed that creators could genuinely spark interest in its collections.

But beyond these high points, the brand remained relatively discreet.

“There wasn’t much happening outside the co-creations,” explains Lancaster Manager PR & Influence Sarah Chassagne. “People weren’t necessarily thinking of Lancaster when they talked about handbags” .

Influencer activation wasn’t yet a long-term engine, it was more episodic. As a result, Lancaster lacked the consistent presence needed to build cultural relevancy in a competitive leather goods market.

The gap and the opportunity for Lancaster was clear:

• establish a structured, continuous influence strategy;
• modernise and sharpen Lancaster’s fashion positioning;
• reconnect the brand with women aged 30–45, a demographic with strong purchasing power and an appetite for premium yet accessible luxury.

Having arrived at Lancaster in June, Sarah Chassagne spent the summer doing meticulous groundwork. With no budget initially, she relied entirely on organic gifting to rebuild Lancaster’s presence in the right circles.

As investment followed, Lancaster could shift from maintenance to ambition.

The turning point came with Paris Fashion Week on the horizon, a cultural moment that acts as a magnet for fashion inspiration, visual storytelling and global attention. For Lancaster, in the midst of refreshing its brand image, PFW represented an ideal stage: a chance to align with creators who naturally move through the ecosystem, tap into the week’s visual codes, and present Lancaster bags in authentic, fashion-led environments.

It wasn’t about staging a spectacle or competing with runway giants. It was about inserting Lancaster into the cultural rhythm of PFW in a way that felt genuine, contemporary and connected, using creators whose credibility would elevate the brand at exactly the right moment.

The strategy: create a Fashion Week moment through street-style storytelling

With no runway show in the calendar, Lancaster created its own Fashion Week moment through a street-style activation designed to mirror the aesthetic and cultural codes of PFW.

Creators were invited to shoot PFW-inspired looks ahead of the event, giving them high-quality assets to post during Fashion Week itself.

“We organised a shoot beforehand so they could post during the week,” Sarah explains. “They’re usually dressed by brands that invite them during PFW, so this was the best way to show Lancaster in that context.”

A trusted fashion photographer who was already known to the creators was booked to ensure cohesive, editorial-level imagery. “It was important that the women felt comfortable. The photographer knows them well and works with them often,” added Sarah .

The idea was simple and sharp: use the codes of Fashion Week to showcase Lancaster bags through creators who genuinely belong to that world.

Creator selection and content approach: authenticity over size, fashion credibility over reach

Rather than prioritising follower count, Sarah Chassagne focused on fashion credibility and cultural influence when selecting influencers for the campaign.

The final cast brought together a tight group of women whose profiles naturally echoed Lancaster’s refreshed fashion positioning.

It included: Monica Ainley DLV (@monicaainleydlv, 160K followers), a freelance fashion journalist whose editorial eye and Parisian presence made her a perfect fit; L by Lise (@lisepierron, 46.56K followers), a fashion and lifestyle creator with a sharp, contemporary aesthetic; Nam Suu (@nam.isackson, 13.51K followers), a model and fashion designer rooted in the industry’s creative circles; and Chloé Lecareux (@chloelecareaux, 526.07K followers), a model and creator whose vibrant, high-fashion universe brought strong visual impact to the campaign.

All four move naturally through Paris’s vibrant fashion community, attending shows, working with designers, and inspiring fashion-minded audiences. Together, they formed a cohesive group whose credibility and personal style naturally amplified Lancaster’s Fashion Week narrative.

“These weren’t necessarily huge profiles,” Sarah Chassagne explains. “But they have hyper-affinitary, hyper-fashion communities.”

Kolsquare’s role: smart casting, credibility checks and daily content tracking

As a former agency professional, Sarah integrated Kolsquare into her daily routine and strategy decisions from day one.

“Kolsquare helps me a lot with age distribution, city and country breakdowns, everything I need to verify,” she says. “I use it to check credibility scores, find profiles, and confirm they fit our target” .

Making credibility central — and narrative

When selecting creators, Sarah didn’t rely solely on instinct or familiarity. She wanted creators whose influence was real, whose communities were authentic, engaged, and aligned with Lancaster’s positioning.

This is where Kolsquare’s audience analysis became essential.

“I always check credibility scores,” she notes. “Some profiles can be surprising” .

A polished feed and a fashion-forward aesthetic aren’t enough. A creator can look like the perfect fit on the surface — until the data reveals an audience that’s less aligned or less genuine. For a brand rebuilding desirability among modern, fashion-driven women, avoiding that mismatch is crucial.

Using Kolsquare, Sarah Chassagne was able to validate which creators genuinely influenced their communities and which profiles had audiences that were both solid and trustworthy. The platform also helped her identify cases where a creator’s polished aesthetic masked an audience that wasn’t aligned with Lancaster’s goals, allowing her to avoid partnerships that looked promising on the surface but wouldn’t have delivered meaningful impact.

By blending her insider knowledge of the Paris fashion ecosystem with Kolsquare’s credibility insights, she assembled a cast that was not only stylish, but strategically sound.

“I use Kolsquare every day. The content collection is super helpful, especially with all the gifting we do,” Sarah adds. “It helps me track everything that gets posted.”

The platform provided Lancaster with a real-time view of the campaign’s impact during one of the busiest cultural weeks of the year.

Results: stronger visibility, modern appeal and clear commercial impact

Although the campaign was primarily designed as a brand-building moment, its performance quickly extended beyond image. Across just a handful of carefully selected creators, the Fashion Week activation generated 15 high-quality contents, reaching 472,000 people, and delivering an Earned Media Value of €23,000, strong indicators for a strategy focused on credibility rather than scale.

But the quantitative results tell only part of the story. The qualitative impact was just as striking. While this Paris Fashion Week activation contributed to Lancaster’s renewed visibility, the change observed in-store stemmed from the broader influence strategy Sarah implemented throughout FW25, that combined targeted paid collaborations with a structured gifting approach.

“The store teams said there was a real change in visibility,” Sarah Chassagne comments. “People were coming in with screenshots of the creators’ photos and asking for the models they’d seen.”

The PFW activation amplified Lancaster’s presence among style-conscious urban consumers, boosted social engagement, and drove in-store demand directly linked to the looks showcased by creators.

The campaign reaffirmed Lancaster’s place in the fashion conversation, and demonstrated that with the right casting and data, even a compact activation can deliver substantial visibility and meaningful commercial uplift.

Closing: a brand back in the fashion conversation

Through premium casting, sharp creative direction and reliable performance tracking via Kolsquare, Lancaster successfully used Paris Fashion Week to reinvent how it shows up in the fashion landscape.

The result is a more confident, more modern, more culturally attuned Lancaster — with creators at the heart of its renewed identity.

Curious how Kolsquare can help your brand craft its next defining moment? Book a demo with one of our influence experts.