When Danielle Bernstein founded her style blog WeWoreWhat as a college student over a decade ago, the idea of bloggers attending fashion week was a prickly subject for stalwart editors and buyers. Now bloggers, or rather influencers in 2024 parlance, don’t just sit front row at fashion shows, they’re sometimes the ones calling the shots. On Saturday, Danielle Bernstein makes her New York Fashion Week debut as a founder with a see-now, buy-now presentation for her WeWoreWhat clothing brand.
“As someone who’s attended over a decade of fashion weeks as a viewer, the time really felt right to create a presence for the brand,” Bernstein told Glossy ahead of Saturday’s presentation. “The purpose of this is to have a community building event where we can not only have press and influencers come, but also our customers and followers.”
Fashion week has changed significantly since Bernstein first began attending, moving away from a business transaction between buyers and editors and designers into a marketing opportunity both IRL and on social media. And Bernstein’s fashion week debut comes as influencer-founded brands are evolving too — and increasingly thinning in ranks.
Arielle Charnas, whose Something Navy blog was a contemporary of the original WeWoreWhat, founded her own fashion line in 2020 only to close it in 2023. Beauty influencer Hyram Yarbro launched his Selfless skin-care line at Sephora in 2021, but exited the retailer the following year and has since relaunched at a lower price point at Target.
“You really need to own the product you’re selling to have longevity in this industry,” she said. “I’ve been doing this for 13-plus years, and I’m really fortunate that I was able to make the switch from influencer to brand owner a few years ago. [I was able to] focus on that to be successful and have longevity as a brand, so that it wasn’t just an influencer promoting a brand she created.”
Bernstein said her team expects 300-500 visitors to come through her fashion week launch held in New York City’s Soho neighborhood, which will begin with an exclusive presentation to press and influencers before opening to the public. She said WeWoreWhat typically does $1 million in sales on launch days, with her brand launching new collections every two weeks. Overall, Bernstein said the brand pulls in $35 million to $40 million in sales annually with an even split between e-commerce and wholesale, and it’s on track to reach that range in 2024.
Customers attending the fashion week presentation will be given access to a QR code to immediately shop the collection online. Bernstein will present three collections on the day, including a leather and outerwear collection, a cotton collection in collaboration with Cotton, Inc., and the main fall ready-to-wear collection. Prices will range from $29 to $168, with sizes available from XXS to size 16.
“You’ll see we have a lot of size inclusivity and diversity within our models in the presentation, a few plus-sized models,” she said. “I want my customers to see themselves in the collection.”
Bernstein called WeWoreWhat a “head-to-toe” brand and has plans for it to grow even beyond its current offerings that range from swimwear to jewelry. For now, Bernstein herself is still a major part of its public face, appearing in the brand’s social channels to model and promote the collections. But that also means the controversies around her name still figure into the brand’s image; fashion industry watchdog Diet Prada has repeatedly accused her brand of copying indie designers, claims which Bernstein said have no legal basis.
“None of those accusations were ever founded in a legal way,” she said. “They never stopped the brand, and I never went silent because we hadn’t done anything wrong.”
Bernstein acknowledged that some degree of negativity comes with the territory of acquiring a sizable following. But her goal is for WeWoreWhat to eventually exist outside of Danielle Bernstein, the person and influencer.
“The brand has to be able to live past me and my audience. That’s how we will reach the most success,” she said. “I think when people think of WeWoreWhat, they’re not just thinking of Danielle Bernstein now, they’re really thinking of the brand.”
