On Saturday, December 6, the annual Streamer Awards took place in Los Angeles at The Wiltern Theatre. Born in 2022, the ceremony honours the year’s biggest achievements in the live-streaming industry across various categories. While the celebratory event may be relatively new, millions of dedicated fans around the world already stand behind the ceremony’s young honorees.

Streamer of the Year, IShowSpeed (20), has amassed more than 2.6 million Twitch followers, and the recipient of the Rising Star Award, Marlon (24), boasts 1.6 million. Perhaps the most well-known of the honorees, Kai Cenat (23), has more than 20 million followers, with his broadcasts regularly reaching upwards of 10 million views.

Instead of talking up his streams, Cenat, who won Best Streamed Collab, Best Marathon Stream, Best Streamed Event, and Best Just Chatting Streamer, used his stage time to talk about his non-streaming goals: “I don’t usually do this, but I feel like this event right now is the right time to say the things on my mind. And that’s that for the past year I’ve had dreams besides streaming, to achieve and to pursue. And they’re big, big dreams.”

In addition to hopes of going into the film industry, Cenat shared that he has dreams “one day, to become a fashion designer and start my own clothing brand.”

As fashion slowly warms up to streamer culture, the dream is surely within reach. Already, Cenat has been lingering on the outskirts of fashion. In 2024, Nike inked a partnership with Cenat, choosing to debut the Air Max 1 “Low Poly” on his Twitch. And more recently, Cenat went live with rapper Gunna to promote Justin Bieber‘s new label SKYLRK, sporting full SKYLRK looks and showing off the footwear lineup. The streamer also famously revealed that he turned down a 2025 Met Gala invite, transparently sharing that he wasn’t in alignment with the brand that invited him.

A Cenat-designed fashion line wouldn’t be his first entrepreneurial venture. Cenat recently got into personal care, with streamer group AMP, through the launch of Tone. Cenat and other AMP members — Duke Dennis, Fanum, Agent 00, ChrisNxtDoor, and ImDavisss — launched their skincare brand in early 2025 and are already offering their lotions, deodorants, and more at Target.

Other major streamers have already seized the opportunity to develop their own apparel lines. Regular Kai Cenat collaborator, RayAsianBoy, launched his apparel label RUEI in Fall 2025, offering color-blocked tracksuits covered with unique piping designs. Even earlier in 2021, streamer Hasan Piker launched IDEOLOGIE, offering Made in the USA, union-manufactured streetwear styles emblazoned with his subversive graphics. However, it’s easy to imagine that a Kai Cenat-led brand would likely benefit from greater resources and perhaps, a more robust concept, given the streamer’s high stature in the scene.

On the flip side, big-time maisons began dipping their toes in livestreaming and gaming, starting around 2020, when COVID-19 lockdowns relegated communications to the digital sphere. In 2019, Louis Vuitton caught the drift early with its League of Legends collaboration and in 2020, Burberry used Twitch to live stream its SS21 collection. However, fashion’s streamer push has since slowed as physical events and activations have seen a major rebound.

Not very long ago, the fashion industry was governed by more conservative rules, characterized by an insider mentality that clearly defined who and what could be in fashion, and who and what was considered outside of its scope. Over the last 20 years, generational shifts and the emergence of social media platforms have challenged the industry to adapt to more inclusive approaches.

Musicians once stood firmly on the outside as mere brand ambassadors and front-row spectators, but slowly, they became designers and CEOs in their own right. Long before Pharrell stood at the helm of Louis Vuitton, he launched Billionaire Boys Club with Japanese designer Nigo in 2003. Though riddled with controversy, Ye‘s rapid rise from rapper to designer was also a major milestone. He presented his first fashion line, “DW,” at Paris Fashion Week in 2011, followed by an extensive (and now-defunct) adidas line. Now in 2025, A$AP Rocky leads his own fashion line, AWGE, along with snagging the title of Ray-Ban‘s first-ever Creative Director and recently being named a Chanel ambassador.

All of this is to say that today, fashion’s once tightly locked gates have opened. Not only have rappers been embraced by fashion, but also web influencers, Hollywood socialites, and major athletes with brands like Hailey Bieber‘s RHODE beauty line, Kim Kardashian‘s SKIMS, and Travis Kelce‘s True Kolors. After opening the door first to A-list celebrities and first-wave influencers (Instagram, TikTok, etc.), could fashion’s next frontier be livestreamers?

It’s important to note that fashion brands have navigated this unfamiliar territory with caution. The culture of livestreaming is rather unique from traditional content creation. Once a frontier itself, the fashion industry has completely adapted to Instagram, which has become the de facto platform where brands share news and drop campaigns. But unlike traditional feed posts, which allow for more tailored messaging and editorial visuals, Twitch’s live broadcasts are disseminated without opportunities for editing.

Furthermore, the intimate relationships livestreamers have nurtured with their audiences are understandably stronger than those of traditional influencers. Not only does the livestream offer an unfiltered and unedited channel to interact with streamers, but the synchronous nature of the broadcasts also creates a real-time connection with the millions of viewers.

Armed with organically grown and direct lines to their audiences, streamers are already realizing that their unique position has granted them a foundation to set up shop in entirely different territories. Indeed, since many of the top streamers are young adults between 20–30 years old, we may not see some of these ventures truly take off for another few years — and as we have seen with musician-led brands, there will inevitably be bumps in the road. But with Kai Cenat, one of the world’s biggest streamers, potentially leading the charge, the streamer generation’s break into the fashion world may be imminent.

Following the passionate declaration of his fashion designer aspirations, Cenat said “I’m 100% gonna indulge myself in that,” and concluded that he would continue “enjoying the place that started all this, which is streaming.”