Hello, Open Thread. The holy month of Ramadan began this week. So did the Lunar New Year.

Fashion month is also in full swing, with the style set moving on from New York to London. Before everyone left, however, Dash Social, the marketing and management platform, sent out its recap of who, according to social media metrics, dominated New York Fashion Week. And the winner was …

Calvin Klein!

According to the Dash Social folks, Calvin clocked 18,747 mentions, with 4.7 million engagements. The runner-up was Ralph Lauren, with 4,326 mentions and 3.4 million engagements, followed by Coach with 2,803 mentions and 1.7 million engagements.

Why I am telling you this?

Because what seems to have driven almost all of the Calvin posts and reposts was the celebrity-studded front row, which included Dakota Johnson, Brooke Shields, Lily Collins and the Thai actress Milk Pansa — and all of their followers. Not, in other words, the clothes, which were confusing. (A full review can be found here.)

This reflects the reality that, at least for some brands, the runway is really just the conduit for the celebrity content, the way some Starbucks coffees are just a conduit for a sugar rush. Indeed, there are fashion brands that show clothes that will never be made or make it to stores. And the celeb content serves to sell the other stuff that actually is on the rack. In Calvin’s case, that is the jeans and underwear.

There are still some brands that produce and sell everything they show on their runways. Joseph Altuzarra is one of them, as is Carolina Herrera, whose designer Wes Gordon told me that the point was not only to make all the clothes he shows, but also to show a bunch of them on women from the art world. (That’s Ming Smith, Rachel Feinstein, Eliza Douglas and Ahn Duong above.)

If that inevitable question “Who will wear that?” comes up, his answer is simple: They will.

In other news, King Charles III is making waves at London Fashion Week. First he showed up at one of the opening shows of the collections, Tolu Coker, a newish label founded by a British Nigerian designer. It was a rare appearance by a sitting monarch at fashion week and one that was especially notable given that his brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, had been arrested by the British police the day before on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

That the king nevertheless thought fashion was important enough to ignore the scrutiny and gossip that would follow his brother’s arrest and come out to support the industry was a pretty striking statement.

Another one: At the show, the king was sitting next to Stella McCartney, the British designer he had just named ambassador for his Sustainable Markets Initiative. That’s the fashion project he started in 2020 with Federico Marchetti, the former chairman of Yoox Net-a-Porter, to address the industry’s role in the climate crisis. Given fashion’s increasing silence on sustainability, his focus on the topic matters.

Think about that. Then plunge into the complicated politics of Rama Duwaji’s style, recently on display at New York Fashion Week; catch up with Rachel Zoe, the OG stylist; and meet the young men obsessed with looksmaxxing.

Have a good, safe weekend. The BAFTAs are on Sunday. Check in here for all the red carpet looks. I will talk to you next Friday from Milan.