With 86% of marketers expected to partner with influencers in 2025, creators can rest assured collaborations aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
From nano influencers to macro creators, fashion brands are continuously looking for collaborators who can reach new engaged audiences and highlight products in the best light possible, while authentically conveying a message. By prioritizing content quality, engagement rates, and niche relevance, you can be the next influencer partner to fashion brands Norm, Rouri, or Tiger Mist.
In this article, we'll go over what fashion brands look for in an influencer partner, 10 fashion brands looking to collaborate with influencers, 5 mistakes to avoid when collaborating like
focusing on self interests and not your audience’s, and finally, H&M’s successful influencer partnership case study.
It’s no surprise followers might get overlooked when searching for influencer partners, because brands not just look at audience size, but someone who aligns with its values, image, and content aesthetics.
Let’s explore what can make your content creation journey stand out to fashion brands:
1. Authentic Relationships: A survey done by Stackla found that 86% of consumers say authenticity is important in their brand decisions. When searching collaborators, brands keep an eye for those who maintain a genuine relationship with their audience by interacting with them through comments, stories, and more.
2. High-quality Content: According to grin, 60% of marketers say influencer content consistently outperform branded content. By mastering storytelling and visual appeal in the fashion industry, you can outperform regular ads with professional, engaging content.
3. Brand Alignment: Beyond niche relevance, brands prioritize a creators’ voice, values, and style. By staying true to your core essence and interests you can collaborate with aligned brands, making collaborations feel seamless and natural to both audiences.
4. Engagement Rates: With fashion influencers achieving engagement rates of 10% during 2025, significantly outperforming the general industry average of just 2%, brands search for this indicator to analyze how well that creator resonates with its own audience.
Check out our top fashion brands that work with micro influencers to boost engagement and build authentic connections with niche audiences.
As an example of high-quality content and brand alignment, Rian Phin (@thatadult on Instagram and TikTok) is a fashion creator known for her original takes on style, culture, and identity. Unlike trend-driven influencers, Rian brings a thoughtful lens to fashion, blending high-quality visuals with critique.
Her distinct approach has led her to be featured in Vogue Business, Elle, Paper Magazine, and partner with brands like eBay and Nike, proving that staying true to your voice and treating content seriously can open doors to meaningful collaborations with fashion brands.
When reaching out to potential brand partners, make sure you avoid these 5 common step backs to maximize your efforts and continue to grow your social media presence:
1. Lack Of Alignment: Specially on a niche as wide as fashion, reaching out to a brand that doesn’t match your content, values, or audience is a fast track to getting ignored. Make sure to prioritize authentic partnerships. If your style or audience doesn’t fit, it’s better to skip the pitch.
2. Generic Pitching: As brands get pitches every day, make sure you stand out by avoiding generic proposals. Instead, personalize your outreach by mentioning specific products, recent campaigns, or how your audience aligns with their brand.
3. Focusing On Self Interests And Not Audience: When pitching, highlight your strengths and key metrics as a creator, but don’t forget to mention why this partnership would make sense to your audience. After all, those people are going to be your and your brand partner’s consumers.
4. Lack Of Clear Goals Or Metrics: Be open to sharing expected reach, engagement rates, or previous results. Brands want creators who understand performance, not just aesthetics. How can you benefit them?
5. Neglecting Long Term Deals: Don’t treat all partnerships as a one-time deal. Instead, try mentioning how you’re open to building a long-term relationship. This can signal professionalism and commitment.
Key Takeaway: To land meaningful brand deals in the fashion space, your pitch should go beyond aesthetics. Focus on authentic alignment, personalized outreach, audience value, performance metrics, and a long-term mindset to stand out and build lasting connections.
Depending on the influencer and type of collaboration, a fashion brand’s goal when looking for influencer partners include:
A great example of a brand awareness campaign was when H&M partnered with creators like Tyler Posey, Peyton List, Hannah Simone, and Jama Kramer across multiple social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube.
With the objective of building brand awareness and desirability during the holiday season, this popular fashion brand used teaser clips and full ads, tailored to each influencer’s personality, to boost authenticity and engagement.
This resulted in 12 million YouTube impressions and an overall 10% engagement rate.
Even though Posey carried a wide audience, allowing him to portray content both him and his audience value reflects how brands not just partner with creators for reach, but for authenticity.
When your content aligns with your personal style and audience, you become a valuable collaborator in driving both brand awareness and engagement.
As fashion brands double down their influencer collaborations in 2025, creators like you can leverage social media like instagram or tiktok to find those who best align with your goals and audience interests.
Whether you are a nano creator, starting to build up a following, or a macro influencer ready to upscale brand partnerships, brands like Tiger Mist and The Label are actively offering exciting opportunities to stand out in a creator saturated market and foster long-lasting relationships
With platforms like Creator Hero, both brands and creators can seamlessly connect and access authentic partnerships with all the necessary tools to monetize influence and grow on today’s social media landscape.