This month, over a dozen creators took the stage for a fashion show unlike any other.
At this year's VidSummit, a YouTube and video marketing conference in Dallas, Texas, attendees expected to see panels on marketing, AI, and the all-knowing algorithm. But YouTubers in attendance also encountered a fashion show, complete with the usual: a runway, fingernail knives, and a four-legged Furby robot.
The second Creators in Fashion event took place on October 9, elevating what creator advertising events could be. Influencers from all corners of the web, like the Try Guys, HopeScope, and Safiya Nygaard, strutted their own clothing lines while also engaging in wacky challenges.
Creating a YouTube fashion show
Started last year by Theorists, a collective of four YouTube channels dissecting games, movies, food, and fashion, Creators in Fashion began as a way for influencers to express themselves and their brands in a way that isn't childish or unprofessional.
Matthew Patrick (also known as MatPat), who started dissecting video game theories in 2011, is one of the founders behind Creators in Fashion. In 2024, he stepped down as the face of the Theorist channel to take on bigger projects that he expected could change the face of the creator economy — including what became this fashion show.
"I'm realizing there are all these pain points, problems, or unique opportunities that I'm seeing that other people might not see," Patrick told Mashable in an interview. "Let me figure out those solutions to help the people coming up behind me, or the rest of the industry at large."
Creators are one of the driving forces behind our modern economy, so much so that they've engendered the "creator economy." Influencers are becoming household names, with grinning teeth selling us chocolate bars, energy drinks, caffeinated gum, and energy powder. And business is only expected to grow, with the influencer marketing industry expected to hit $470 billion by 2027, according to a 2023 creator economy report from Goldman Sachs.
Content creators are small businesses that require a steady stream of revenue, just like your average mom-and-pop shop or big box retailer. Relying on one platform or revenue stream is an incredibly risky gamble, and Patrick discovered that the only way to thrive was to find new ways to earn. "You want to diversify your revenue streams, because at the end of the day, a lot of your business is built on someone else's land," Patrick said.
So, along with teaching Congress about the value of influencers with the Congressional Creators Caucus, Patrick and his team dreamed up new ways to help grow and maintain the creator economy. They built the first Creators in Fashion, a two-hour show that was mostly just a traditional runway, with models and influencers walking down the catwalk in everything from hoodies to chic couture. "The goal of the show has always been to introduce people who might not think style and fashion content is for them to ease that learning curve and make it accessible to a wider variety of people," Patrick said.
The first year was a "proof of concept" according to the host of Style Theory and Creators in Fashion, Amy Roberts. "We had a lot of other things we wanted to do that we really couldn't execute on," she told Mashable. Creating a full-blown variety show with multiple sketches just wasn't possible with the amount of time and resources they had.
The 2025 Creators in Fashion
This year, the Theorists and their parent company Lunar X wanted to go for something grander but more akin to a YouTube video. Segments that allowed creators to show off their skills cut through the fashion, including a four-person, three-minute makeup challenge competition and a cake decorating showdown.
Though Mary Allyson, a cake decorating YouTuber with 1.8 million subscribers, lost her baking duel for failing to make anything but a cake border in the time limit, she was still thrilled to be included. Allyson told Mashable that she was connected with the event through VidSummit, and "when they told me that it would be kind of like a fashion show mixed with a variety show, I was all in." Allyson herself has not yet launched a line of merchandise, but is working "hard behind the scenes to drop something really fun next year."
For creators promoting their apparel lines, Creators in Fashion collaborated with YouTube to develop a new way for fans to purchase items they see. When a clothing line was shown off IRL, like the Try Guys' Lasagna Island collection, a link appeared directing viewers directly to the store. "YouTube Shopping wasn't really built to do that," Roberts said. "So we worked with YouTube Shopping to figure out how to link all these stores in the background so that we can tag them as if they were our own products."
This year's show ended with a pure encapsulation of the magic that creators can produce with their own creativity and vigor. Evan and Katelyn showed off a dress made entirely of resin, Jessica Crafternoon slayed with hand-knitted dresses, and Estafannie literally shocked with a taser bracelet and nails made out of knives (the latter took 89 hours to make).
Estafannie was one of the smaller creators on the show, sitting at around 90,000 subscribers on YouTube, but her feminist-first-focused tech was just as mesmerizing as anything else on that stage. "I met Amy at an event and we both bonded over wearing [activewear brand] POPFLEX," she said. "She asked what I did, and later that night stalked my content. That's how I got invited."
When putting together Creators in Fashion, it was important for Patrick and the Theorists to include creators of all shapes and sizes, diversifying their stage beyond the 50 largest creators that are already selling at Target. Growing these days becomes difficult when platform discoverability is hindered with each new iteration of AI slop, and formulaic content ruins the magic of originality.
"I think it's important to make sure it's balanced with up-and-coming creators who are doing good work, but don't necessarily have a mega-size platform or a huge megaphone to celebrate their work," Patrick said. "A platform like this is a huge opportunity for them, a great spotlight to shine, and it allows large creators to use their platform to kind of celebrate and curate the next generation of creators who are doing awesome stuff."
Creators in Fashion is a welcome passion project in an age where creators are dominating our economy but still not given the proper respect they deserve. Here's hoping that it gets the chance to strut again next year.