There is a moment in the history of K-pop’s relationship with luxury fashion that deserves to be circled in red on a calendar and remembered. June 15, 2026. The day Tod’s quietly dropped an announcement that, to the untrained eye, looked like just another K-pop brand deal. To anyone who had been paying attention , really paying attention , for the past seven years, it was the final note of something that had been building since a music video filmed in Seoul in 2019.
HAN of Stray Kids. Tod’s brand ambassador. The last piece.
Because with that announcement, something happened that has never happened before in the history of K-pop, luxury fashion, or the intersection of the two. Every single member of Stray Kids, all eight of them , became the face of a major house simultaneously. Bang Chan with Fendi. Lee Know with Gucci. Changbin with Autry. Hyunjin with Versace, Cartier and GUESS Jeans. Han with Tod’s. Felix with Louis Vuitton and Adidas. Seungmin with Burberry. I.N with Bottega Veneta and Damiani.
Nobody planned this. Nobody sat in a boardroom and mapped it out on a whiteboard. It grew organically, over years, from eight young men who had something that the fashion industry cannot manufacture: genuine taste. And this is the story of how they built it.
IT STARTED WITH A MUSIC VIDEO
Before we talk about front rows and ambassadorships and the Met Gala, we need to talk about Miroh.
March 2019. Stray Kids’ first anniversary. A music video about corruption and rebellion and breaking free from systems designed to crush you , which is a very Stray Kids thing to be singing about one year into their career. But fashion fans who paused the video at the right moments noticed something that had nothing to do with the narrative. HAN was wearing an Alexander McQueen Brush Strokes Zip Jacket. Hyunjin had on Fendi FF Jacquard Shorts. Bang Chan was in a Maison Kitsuné bomber.
This was not a group being dressed by a team with a luxury budget and a brand relationship. This was a group that knew what they liked and wore it. The difference is everything.
By the time Thunderous dropped in 2021, the signals were impossible to miss if you were looking for them. Changbin topped his look with a Celine bowling shirt. HAN pulled on a Givenchy flocked logo tee. Celine and Givenchy — two of Paris’s most storied houses — worn by members of a K-pop act that had not yet signed with either. The stylings felt less like coincidence and more like a preview of things to come.
And then Maniac arrived in 2022, and everything accelerated. Hyunjin in that video was wearing a Gucci web-striped pearl necklace, pieces from Celine, and a Vetements blazer over an MISBHV monogram top. Three houses. One video. One member. If the industry wasn’t watching Stray Kids’ fashion instincts by then, they weren’t paying attention.
THE MOMENT THE GROUP CAME TOGETHER
Before any single member signed with a house of their own, Stray Kids built their collective credibility — and they did it in two very different ways.
The first was quiet. In 2021, DanceRacha unit ( Hyunjin, Lee Know and Felix ) partnered with Etro for the brand’s Earthbeat sneakers campaign film. It was the first time a Stray Kids unit had a formal fashion relationship, and it worked because it felt real.
The energy of those three together , the playfulness, the physical precision, the boyish ease — was exactly what Etro wanted to communicate with that campaign.
The second was anything but quiet.
August 2023. Stray Kids named global ambassadors for Tommy Hilfiger. The announcement was big. What came next was historic. In May 2024, all eight members walked into the Met Gala together, wearing custom Tommy Hilfiger, as the first K-pop boy group to attend with their complete lineup. They arrived in matching overcoats that were dramatically removed to reveal tailored suits in Hilfiger’s red, white and blue. The internet, as it tends to do when Stray Kids does something collectively extraordinary, completely lost its composure.
Tommy Hilfiger himself called their style “a constant source of inspiration.” Coming from one of American fashion’s most celebrated designers, that is not a throwaway line. That is a recognition.
After the Met Gala, nobody in the luxury world was asking whether Stray Kids had fashion credibility. The conversation had moved on to which houses would move first.
EIGHT MEMBERS, EIGHT HOUSES
Felix // Louis Vuitton and Adidas
Felix was first. And the house that came for him was, characteristically, the biggest one on the planet.
Since August 2023, Felix has been a Louis Vuitton ambassador, a relationship that has deepened with every season in a way that feels genuinely mutual rather than contractual. His personal style, bold, joyful, unafraid of volume and colour and drama, was already speaking Louis Vuitton before the house made it official. When Pharrell Williams arrived at Vuitton and began reorienting the house around maximalist, boundary-dissolving luxury, it only made the fit more obvious.
Felix didn’t just sit in the front row. In February 2024, he walked the runway at Louis Vuitton’s Fall/Winter 2024 womenswear show during Paris Fashion Week , one of the very few K-pop idols to make that crossing from ambassador to model for the house. He attended the Pre-Fall show in Seoul. The Cruise 2025 show in Barcelona. The Cruise 2026 show in France, where he appeared in a sleek blue suit with the Petite Malle handbag and looked, as he tends to, as though he had been dressing this way since birth.
And then there is the Silver Lockit collection , developed in close collaboration with Felix and tied to his role as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Korea , which has raised over $24 million for UNICEF since its launch. Fashion as philanthropy, carried by someone who genuinely means it.
In March 2026, Felix added Adidas to his portfolio, named Global Brand Ambassador and Icon for the brand’s Originals SS26 campaign alongside model Hoyeon Jung. Louis Vuitton and Adidas, the full spectrum of what fashion can mean in 2026, held by one person who makes both feel inevitable.
Hyunjin // Versace, Cartier, Givenchy Beauty and GUESS Jeans
If Felix landed the first deal, Hyunjin built the most extraordinary portfolio. And he did it with an ambition that makes it very clear this was never going to stop at one house.
July 2023. Versace named Hyunjin its global brand ambassador , the first Korean star ever to hold that title. Donatella Versace started calling him “The Versace Prince,” which is the sort of thing you only say about someone who has actually made your brand feel different just by wearing it. In February 2024, he attended the Versace Fall/Winter show in Milan in all-black and looked like the collection was made for him , because increasingly, it was. By August 2024, Donatella was fitting him personally for four custom looks for the dominATE world tour at the Palazzo Versace in Milan. The idol-as-muse, fully realized.
September 2024. Cartier. The Trinity, Love and Panthère collections in official campaign images, and a statement from Hyunjin that said everything about how he approaches these relationships: “I’m so proud to become part of the Cartier family. It is an incredible honour to join them in this journey, as we continue to inspire and challenge the boundaries of beauty and creativity together.” Measured. Considered. Completely sincere.
In 2025, Givenchy Beauty followed. And in March 2026, GUESS JEANS announced Hyunjin as its newest global ambassador, centering the campaign on the brand’s signature denim and asking him to reframe its legacy through a sharper, more contemporary lens. Nicolai Marciano praised Hyunjin’s role in what he called “a new era of expression.” Four houses. Fashion, fine jewellery, beauty and denim. A portfolio that no other idol has built at this scale.
Bang Chan // Fendi
The leader waited. And when his house came, it came in a way that felt exactly right for someone who has always understood the value of patience.
Bang Chan’s relationship with Fendi started with a front row seat at the brand’s menswear spring 2025 show in Milan in June 2024. No contract. No announcement. Just a leader who had found a house he connected with and who showed up wearing it , at the world tour, at I-Days Milan, at BST Hyde Park , building a quiet public record of genuine loyalty that preceded the formal relationship by months.
In January 2025, Fendi made it official. Bang Chan, global brand ambassador, in the house’s 100th anniversary year. His words at the announcement were, characteristically, about the connection rather than the achievement: “I felt an immediate connection to Fendi with its creative and fun spirit. It is my honor to join the Fendi family in its 100th anniversary year, which makes it even more special.”
But the relationship between Bang Chan and Fendi went further than any front row appearance or campaign image could capture. In November 2025, the leader did something no K-pop ambassador had done before for a luxury house: he wrote, composed and produced an original song for Fendi. Titled Roman Empire ( recorded, in typical Chan fashion, in a hotel room while on tour ) the track is a smooth R&B and Miami Bass fusion that weaves Fendi’s own symbols directly into its lyrics, from the iconic Peekaboo bag to the signature FF logo. The music video was filmed at Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, Fendi’s headquarters in Rome.
Its premiere was screened on the COEX K-pop Square mega screen in Seoul, followed by a live performance at Palazzo Fendi Seoul. A song written by an artist, for a house, because he genuinely understood what that house stood for. It remains one of the most complete expressions of what a luxury ambassadorship can actually be when it works.
In February 2026, he was front row at Fendi’s Fall/Winter 2026 show in Milan under new creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri. The leader in the front row of his house. The story, as Chan himself once captioned a post, has only just begun.
Lee Know // Gucci
Lee Know’s road to Gucci was the longest and in some ways the most satisfying to follow, because those of us watching could see it coming years before it happened.
He shot campaigns for Gucci. He attended the Gucci Cruise 2025 show in London. He wore Gucci in ways that made you wonder what was taking the house so long. And then in June 2025, Gucci named Lee Know its latest global brand ambassador , and suddenly all those years of watching felt like a prelude to exactly the right ending.
His statement on the appointment was as precise as his dancing: “I believe Gucci is a brand that transcends the past and present through heritage and contemporary creativity. It’s a great honor to be part of Gucci’s visionary journey.” Lee Know doesn’t oversell things. He means exactly what he says.
Changbin // Autry
Changbin’s partnership is the one that surprised the most people and shouldn’t have surprised anyone who actually understands him.
Autry is an Italian sneaker brand built on the idea that heritage and innovation are not opposites but partners , that you can honour where something came from while pointing it toward somewhere new. That is, almost word for word, how Changbin describes his own approach to making music. Roberta Benaglia, executive chairwoman of Autry, said he represents “a new generation of global talent: grounded, driven, and authentic.” She was right.
Changbin was named Autry’s first ever global brand ambassador in February 2026. His own words on the partnership cut straight to what drew him there: “I’ve always been drawn to brands that honor their legacy while embracing innovation and a forward-looking approach to creativity. Autry’s heritage and understated confidence resonate deeply with me.” For a man known for intensity and directness, there is something quietly perfect about his house being one built on exactly those qualities.
HAN // Tod’s
On June 15, 2026, the circle closed.
Tod’s announced HAN as its newest global brand ambassador , and with it, completed something the fashion world will be talking about for years. HAN was the last Stray Kids member without a solo luxury deal. Before the announcement, he had appeared in a campaign for Dior Sauvage , a fragrance he personally bought for himself before any brand relationship existed and calls his “scent of fate” , which had generated enormous conversation about where his formal luxury relationship would land.
It landed with a house that speaks his language. Tod’s is built on the idea that luxury should live in the hand, on the foot and in the daily wardrobe , not as performance but as presence. The campaign images show HAN in a suede bomber with driving shoes and an oversized tote, in soft tailoring that replaces the sharper cuts of idol styling with something more personal. It is a specific argument and a deliberate one: this is HAN, not just Han-Jisung-of-Stray-Kids.
His first official appearance as Tod’s ambassador was at the brand’s men’s presentation at Milan Fashion Week on June 21, 2026. “It’s a great honor to join Tod’s as Brand Ambassador,” he said. “I have long admired the brand’s commitment to Italian craftsmanship, quality, and timeless style.” The last member. The final house. The sweep complete.
Seungmin // Burberry
Seungmin’s ambassadorship tells you something important about how these deals actually work when they work well: it began with a campaign, not an announcement.
Burberry’s Festival campaign placed Seungmin alongside Liam Gallagher, Cara Delevingne, Alexa Chung and Goldie , a cast built around the idea of British creative authenticity across generations. Seungmin fit it perfectly. When Burberry’s chief creative officer Daniel Lee announced the formal ambassadorship in June 2025, he said: “His passion and sense of style will make working together a lot of fun.”
That sentence , unpretentious, warm, direct , sounds very much like the person who said it and very much like the person it was said about.
Seungmin’s response was just as clean: “It is an honor to join the Burberry family. It’s an iconic British brand with a rich heritage, and I love that connection. I’m excited to be part of its future.” No performance. Just a man who genuinely means what he says, which turns out to be exactly what Burberry was looking for.
I.N // Bottega Veneta and Damiani
The youngest member, the most unexpected pairing, and in many ways the most telling story about where luxury fashion’s relationship with K-pop actually lives.
Bottega Veneta under Matthieu Blazy is one of the most intellectually serious luxury operations in the world right now. No logos. Radical materiality. An identity built on the idea that craft should speak for itself without needing to announce its presence. It is a house that thinks about things. And it chose Yang Jeongin , 22 years old, the group’s maknae , as its ambassador.
In September 2024, I.N attended Bottega Veneta’s spring 2025 show at Milan Fashion Week in a bold newsprint outfit, seated next to A$AP Rocky and Kendall Jenner. The image circulated for weeks, and not only because of who he was sitting next to. It circulated because he looked completely at home. In January 2025, Bottega Veneta made it official. His own words on the partnership: “As someone who loves fashion and knows the commitment it takes to master a craft, I am excited and inspired by Bottega Veneta’s incredible artisanship and its spirit of self-expression.”
In May 2025, I.N was also named global brand ambassador for Damiani, the Italian fine jewellery house. The youngest and the most quietly, completely formed.
THE MET, THE RUNWAYS AND THE FRONT ROWS
The ambassadorships tell part of the story. The fashion week presence tells the rest.
The Met Gala 2024 is where the world that hadn’t been paying attention was forced to start. Eight members. Custom Tommy Hilfiger. The first K-pop boy group to attend complete. The overcoats came off. The suits appeared. The internet documented every second. It was not a fashion moment for K-pop fans. It was a fashion moment, full stop. The Met Gala 2024 is where the world that hadn’t been paying attention was forced to start. Eight members. Custom Tommy Hilfiger. The first K-pop boy group to attend complete. The overcoats came off. The suits appeared. British GQ named them the best dressed of the night. Tommy Hilfiger himself celebrated them publicly. It was, by every measure, a historic moment for K-pop and for fashion.
And then the footage from the red carpet arrived.
What the cameras caught was difficult to watch. Photographers directed the group with comments about their posture and expressions that they would never have aimed at a Western act. They were told to “jump” and asked to “perform” , as though eight artists who had just made fashion history were there to entertain the people employed to photograph them. One photographer addressed a Korean group in Japanese. Another suggested that viewers would struggle to tell them apart in photos taken with and without their coats, leaning on a racist stereotype so blunt that it circulated online within hours and generated outrage far beyond the K-pop community.
The reaction was immediate, global and cross-fandom. People who had never listened to a single Stray Kids song were furious. Not because they were fans, but because what happened on those steps was recognisable , the same dismissiveness that BTS had faced years earlier, the same assumption that Asian artists occupy a different tier of the cultural hierarchy, the same failure to extend the basic professional respect that would have been automatic for any Western act in the same position.
The members walked inside anyway. Composed, impeccably dressed, carrying the night on their shoulders with complete dignity. That composure, in the circumstances, was its own kind of statement.
But the incident mattered. It mattered because it was documented. It mattered because the conversation it sparked was real and necessary. And it mattered because the eight luxury ambassadorships that followed , the front rows, the campaigns, the fashion weeks , are, among other things, an answer to what happened that night. Not a revenge, exactly. Something quieter and more lasting than that. Proof, delivered house by house, season by season, that Stray Kids have always belonged exactly where they are.
THE BUSINESS OF BEING STRAY KIDS
None of this is happening by accident. Stray Kids are listed on the Business of Fashion’s BoF 500 , the definitive annual list of the people shaping the global fashion industry , and they belong there not as honorary entries but as genuine forces. Their “growing presence reflects both the evolving relationship between K-pop and global luxury and the strategic shift by fashion houses toward talent with direct fan engagement.”
That last phrase is the key. STAY (the fandom), functions as one of the most efficient amplification systems in global culture. When a member sits front row, their fans organise in real time across time zones, trend hashtags in multiple languages, push branded content to the top of algorithms and generate engagement rates that traditional fashion advertising cannot reach. The houses know this. The deals are built on it. But the reason it works , the reason the engagement is genuine and not manufactured , is that the members themselves are genuinely invested in the brands they represent.
STAY: THE FANDOM THAT MOVES MARKETS
There is a question that every luxury brand asks before signing an ambassador. Not “is this person famous?” Famous is easy to find. The real question is simpler and harder to answer at the same time: does this person’s audience actually do anything?
In the case of Stray Kids, the answer is not a feeling or an impression. It is a documented, consistent, financially significant track record that stretches across music charts, charity campaigns and fashion week front rows simultaneously. And it starts, as everything with Stray Kids starts, with the music.
The numbers that explain everything
As of May 2026, Stray Kids have shipped over 40 million physical albums worldwide , 36 million Korean releases and 4 million Japanese. To put that in context: that is not streaming numbers, not social media impressions, not digital downloads. That is 40 million physical objects that people decided to own. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry ranked them the seventh best-selling artist on the planet in 2022, third in 2023, fifth in 2024 and second in all of 2025. Not second in K-pop. Second in the world, behind only one other act across all genres and all markets.
Their Billboard 200 record is, at this point, genuinely unprecedented. Every single one of their eight charting entries on the chart has debuted at number one , Oddinary and Maxident in 2022, 5-Star and Rock-Star in 2023, Ate and Hop in 2024, Karma and Do It in 2025. Eight consecutive number one debuts. In the nearly 70 years the Billboard 200 has been published, no act in history had ever done that before. They now hold the record for the most number-one albums by any group in the world in the 21st century.
When Hyunjin was announced as Versace ambassador in 2023, STAY had the announcement trending globally before the campaign images had finished loading. When Cartier came next, the pattern repeated. When GUESS Jeans announced their partnership with him in March 2026, fans had already organised viewing events for the campaign launch, were sharing detailed breakdowns of each look across multiple platforms in multiple languages, and had begun actively engaging with the brand’s content in ways that Cartier’s and Versace’s own analytics teams would have tracked and measured. The houses notice this. The contracts that follow are not coincidences.
The infrastructure behind the impact
What makes STAY different from other large fandoms is not just their size , it is their organisation and their genuine interest in the creative work their artists produce. When a Stray Kids member sits in a fashion week front row, STAY are already coordinating across multiple platforms simultaneously, in Korean, English, Mandarin, Spanish and Portuguese, before the show ends. They identify the specific pieces worn, cross-reference them with the brand’s archive, discuss the styling references and generate content that the brand’s own social media teams share and amplify. They function, effectively, as the most informed and most motivated street team that any luxury house has ever had access to , and they do it because they genuinely care, not because anyone asked them to.
Stray Kids as a group have built a social media presence that gives their partner brands access to one of the most engaged global audiences in contemporary music. Individual members carry followings in the tens of millions across platforms, with engagement rates that marketing industry benchmarks for luxury would classify as extraordinary. The Business of Fashion included the group in their BoF 500, the annual list of the people shaping the global fashion industry , not as a nod to their music career but as a recognition that their influence on fashion consumption and brand perception is real, measurable and growing.
The most important number of all
But beyond all the chart positions and album sales and engagement rates, there is one number that captures what STAY mean to the brands that have partnered with Stray Kids more clearly than any other.
$24 million. Raised for UNICEF. Through a bracelet collection that a Louis Vuitton ambassador co-created because he genuinely believed in what it stood for.
That is not a marketing metric. That is a community with purchasing power, genuine values and the willingness to direct both toward something that matters. The luxury industry, which has spent decades trying to build exactly that kind of relationship with its customers, recognised it immediately.
Eight ambassadorships. Twelve houses. Forty million albums. One fandom that, when it decides to move, moves everything with it.
STAY don’t just support Stray Kids. They support what Stray Kids stand for. And in 2026, what Stray Kids stand for includes Fendi, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Versace, Cartier, Burberry, Bottega Veneta, Damiani, Autry, GUESS Jeans, Adidas and Tommy Hilfiger.
The brands didn’t choose Stray Kids despite their fandom. They chose them because of it.
STAY move. In every sense of the word
Eight years. Eight members. Twelve houses. One group. The sweep that no one in the industry had seen coming until the moment it became impossible to look away from.
Fashion will not look at K-pop the same way after Stray Kids. Fashion will not look at itself the same way either.
All images featured in this article are credited to owners . They are used for editorial and illustrative purposes only, with no commercial intent. All rights remain with their respective owners.
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