Are Fashion Watch Parties the New Spectator Sport?
Fashion critic Lyas is turning fashion week livestreams into cultural meetups – no invite required.
If you’d been passing by Le Saint Denis – Rue du Faubourg Saint‑Denis – in Paris this June you’d think it was game day. Hundreds of fashion students, style writers, and hype tourists shoulder-to-shoulder, spilling into the street, with free drinks – supplied by Instagram – firmly in hand.
But this wasn’t a World Cup match. This was J.W. Anderson’s Dior SS26 menswear debut. Broadcast live, in a bar, on a makeshift TV. And, the vibes were so buzzy, it made the actual front row look… tame.
When did the fashion crowd decide that this – not the front row – was the place to be?
It all kicked off when Lyas, fashion critic and TikTok native known for raw fashion takes under the handle @ly.as, didn’t get an invite to the highly anticipated SS26 Dior show. Not one to stay quiet, the social media star announced via his channels that he would instead livestream the show at the Parisian bar, and invited his followers to join him.
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The spontaneous idea quickly turned into a viral fashion watch party, with hundreds of fashion people gathering and bonding over their shared love of fashion – a powerful reminder that culture’s hottest conversations aren’t always started behind elusive industry gates.
Following the success of this event, Lyas announced plans for a Fashion Week watch party tour “I want to host watch parties in every major fashion capital. New York, London, Milan and of course Paris,” he told Hypebeast last month. “I want to create a special experience that feels respectful to the audience. Not another PR moment for brands, rather a moment for people with a real passion,” he continued.
Now, with Fashion Month SS26 already underway, Lyas has officially launched ‘La WATCHPARTY‘ with a teaser video on Instagram. “La WATCHPARTY will kick off in London, in collaboration with the British Fashion Council, followed by Milan, supported by Meta x Whoopsee. The series will culminate in Paris with the largest edition yet, running from September 29 to October 6 at La Caserne,” says Lyas’s team. “Paris will host up to three screenings a day for a total of 1,000 guests, transforming the space into a hybrid between festival and Fashion Week.”
Let’s be clear though, remote viewing fashion shows isn’t a new concept.
Helmut Lang was live-streaming runways back in ‘98. McQueen did it in 2010. But it was the pandemic that really cemented the digital format. Suddenly, major luxury houses – like Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Miu Miu had to embrace their own version of live-streaming to stay relevant and present their new collections. From this new format, an underground wave of Discord runway breakdowns, TikTok live commentary, and Live YouTube streams was born as a way for fashion enthusiasts to watch luxury runways and engage in fashion discourse in real time.
Now, in 2025 Gen Z & millennials are tired of being online 24/7. So they’re building their own IRL linkups: run clubs, sauna squads, creative collectives and DIY dinner parties to name a few. So it tracks that fashion’s online subculture is also stepping out into the world as young people reimagine what in-person connection looks like.
For fashion fans who haven’t cracked the invite list, or simply anyone without an IRL clique to discuss fashion with, these watch parties are more than just a passing fad: They’re access. They’re belonging, and they’re a community. A middle ground between fashion’s elite and the fashion-obsessed.
This is “more than a moment, it’s a movement.” Says Lyas, “even though it comes from this spectator point of view, I want everyone to feel included. The ones that make the heart of fashion are those kids, yearning to learn, to love and to ultimately wear the clothes.”
The full schedule of La WATCHPARTY for London, Milan and Paris will be announced on Lyas’s Instagram.
