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A brand’s community has never been more important. The community — encompassing customers, followers, and others who engage with its content and messaging — has become the lifeblood of a brand. What’s more, engaged customers are likely to attract more customers. In an August survey of its 74,000 Instagram followers, brand-discovery platform Thingtesting showed that “close friends and family” are the most powerful influences on the purchases they make. Influencers came in fourth place.
Though influencers aren’t going anywhere, there is a rising fatigue with their excess of unboxings, lavish press trips and exaggerated claims. See: Tarte’s Dubai trip at the start of the year and Mikayla Nogueira’s recent “mascara gate” scandal. Who consumers now trust are friends, family and enthusiastic customers who aren’t influencers by occupation.
As such, savvy brands are increasingly working overtime to capture the attention and loyalty of everyday customers, including by offering them a sense of community in increasingly creative ways.
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This week, a look at Swedish influencer Matilda Djerf and her fashion brand, Djerf Avenue, which is currently hosting its first NYC pop-up. It will host a NYFW gala for its community at the Guggenheim on Sunday.
By the time I got off the subway at 9 a.m. on Thursday to attend the press preview for Djerf Avenue’s four-day pop-up shop on Spring Street, the line had already been forming for over three hours. The pop-up would open to the public at 10 a.m. It was the first day of the first New York City pop-up for the brand, which was founded by Swedish influencer Matilda Djerf in 2019. As such, it would also be the first time Djerf’s fans could shop the direct-to-consumer, Stockholm-based brand IRL. The 26-year-old has 3.1 million followers on Instagram and Djerf Avenue has 605,000.
Mostly young girls in trendy outfits — baggy jeans, Adidas Sambas and oversized blazers, a Djerf Avenue staple — had woken up early to line up for the chance to get a piece of Djerf Avenue in the flesh. They’d also have the opportunity to interact with the brand in other ways, including by sipping on the Bluestone Lane Djerf Avenue Iced Vanilla Latte, available for free outside the pop-up.
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Walking from the subway, 24-year-old Sophia Cherian approached me, asking if I too was looking for the pop-up. Cherian will turn 25 this weekend and, as an early birthday celebration, she’d taken the day off from work to shop the brand. Though she’s been a fan for some time, she planned to make her first purchase at the store — a miniskirt from its Core Collection. Cherian discovered Djerf through a friend who was planning to visit the pop-up on Friday or Saturday.
“I love that when I look at Djerf Avenue, I can see myself in her clothes,” she said. “[Djerf] features so many different models with so many different types of bodies, and the clothes look amazing on all of them.” Djerf Avenue offers sizes XXS-3XL.
I’d spoken to Matilda about a week prior to the pop-up’s opening and asked how she’d built and maintained her fanbase. “Half of the time, I feel like I know exactly what I’m doing. And then the other half, I’m like, ‘What am I doing?'” she said. “But I try to just always be really genuine. And I’m so passionate about what I do. I would like to think that people can feel that and see that.”
At the pop-up, I met Djerf’s mom, Ulrika Djerf, a tiny woman with bright pink hair dressed entirely in Djerf Avenue. She herself has 25,000 Instagram followers. She echoed her daughter’s statements: “I think it’s because Matilda is so true to herself. She’s humble and she loves what she’s doing.”
But, despite it being a big deal to many of Djerf’s fans, the pop-up was not the impetus for her visit to New York, but rather a cherry on top. On Sunday, Djerf Avenue will host its first New York Fashion Week event, a 281-person gala, of sorts, at the Guggenheim’s Peter B. Lewis Theater. It will include a fashion show and a three-course meal. Rather than prioritize influencers, fashion editors and celebrities, Djerf will fill around 250 of the seats with Djerf Avenue community members who were selected at random via a lottery. Over 6,000 people applied to attend. Those filling it out were asked to share a personal favorite affirmation. At the Guggenheim event, the affirmations will be displayed on a wall.
The brand already features its community members as models on its website — they will model in the fashion show, too. The clothes featured in the show will be remade from existing Djerf Avenue pieces. Djerf said the exercise was a fun way to get her creative juices flowing while also preventing the creation of excess. The pieces will be available for special order during the week after the show. “The whole point of the fashion show is for it to be attainable,” Djerf said. “I want people to see a look and feel like, ‘Oh, I can actually wear this — this is something that I can wear to school or to the office.’ It’s not something completely crazy that only looks good on a runway.” Djerf’s mom will also walk the runway. “I’m not a nepo baby, I’m a nepo mom!” she said.
Djerf Avenue has done pop-ups before — one in Los Angeles last summer and one in its native Stockholm earlier this summer. And they, of course, drive revenue. According to Rasmus Johansson, Djerf Avenue’s CEO and Matilda’s boyfriend, the brand saw 350% year-over-year sales growth from 2021 to 2022.
But the Guggenheim event will mark its largest investment, to date. “We don’t really spend much on traditional paid ads,” said Johansson. “We’re spending more on the event and pop-up than we did [on marketing all of] last year.”
As for why New York City was chosen for the events, Djerf said, “There’s something about New York that excites me. And when we did our pop-up in L.A., we had so many people ask us, ‘Can you please have something in New York?'”
Djerf said she wants the brand to feel welcoming to its community, customers or not. Djerf Avenue has its own Pinterest-esque social media platform, dubbed Angels Avenue, that’s attached to its website. Together, Angels Avenue and the brand’s e-commerce site see over 20,000 unique visitors a month. On its Instagram, the brand features an “Angel of the week,” which highlights a community member who actively engages with the brand. “It’s not based at all on who’s purchased the most. It’s more like, ‘This is a person we see commenting,’ or, ‘This is a person we see engaging a lot, and this is somebody who really spreads positivity on our Angels pages,” Djerf said.
“When I was younger, I was scared to share some photos on my Instagram because people had so many opinions,” Djerf said. “So I wanted to create this safe space where you have to be logged in to actually see all of the content. And there’s a really supportive community that just hypes everybody up. It’s a space for customers to share what inspires them.”
In the same spirit, of making the fashion show environment feel welcoming to the ticket-winners, who would mostly be coming alone, Djerf was sure to include details that would serve as “icebreakers,” she said. For example, Polaroid cameras will be available at round tables.
As I left the pop-up, I stopped to talk to 24-year-old Kelsey Gallagher and her mom, Milly, both of whom had taken the day off from work to drive to Manhattan from New Jersey to see the store. They’d left home at 4:30 a.m. to get in line by 6. Kelsey said she’s been following Djerf since before the brand existed. Gallagher said she appreciates not only the quality of the clothes, but also knowing that the brand works with ethical factories. “The money I’m paying is going toward factories that care for their people.” In its bio, Djerf Avenue states that it is “Ethically produced in Portugal, Sweden and Italy.” A Djerf Avenue blazer, for example, is $179.
The younger Gallagher was planning to buy a $69 “I <3 DA” T-shirt, a pop-up exclusive — and a purchase that would further signal her love of the brand and membership in its community.
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