Fashion's vocabulary shifts between cities. A word that means one thing in Milan means another in Paris, and English often has no equivalent worth using. People who do this work understand each other anyway, but we still wanted these words in writing.
This is how we use them, and how we have heard them used in the room.
Reach is the audience a placement was seen by. For online editorial, the publication's audience for that page or section. For print, circulation. For broadcast, viewership.
Reach is where the calculation begins: how many people could have seen the work. Everything that follows says what it was worth.
CPM is cost per mille: what a thousand impressions cost if you had bought them. It is the bridge between an audience number and a money number.
CPM varies by channel and by market. A thousand readers of Italian print and a thousand viewers of a story are worth different things, and in Hilum the rate for each is set per brand.
EMV is Earned Media Value: what a placement was worth, in euros, without having been paid for. It is the industry term.
Hilum's EMV begins with reach and a rate per thousand, then applies a stack of editorial multipliers — how prominently the brand appeared, whether it carried a cover, how it was credited, the sentiment of the piece, and the outlet's tier and market.
Every placement stores the exact factors it was valued with, and the version of the formula they came from, so a number recorded two seasons ago stays readable under the formula that produced it. Open any placement and the arithmetic is on screen.
Coverage entered by hand is valued more simply — reach against the rate per thousand, with no editorial multipliers — because nobody has read the piece to score it.
EMV = reach × (CPM ÷ 1,000) × the editorial multipliers for that placement
MIV® is Media Impact Value, Launchmetrics' metric for the same question, and the one most often cited in fashion. It is proprietary.
Both answer the same question: what was that placement worth?
What matters day to day is not the label but whether the formula is open to you. Hilum's is: every input on screen, every factor stored alongside the placement it scored. It is a number you can walk through line by line, whether with a founder planning next season or a client seeing what the work earned.
Prominence is whether the brand carried the story or appeared in it: a lead credit, a supporting mention, a passing reference.
It is the single largest swing factor in what a placement is worth, and the one that rewards the closest reading.
Credit is how the brand appears: worn, carried, named, styled. Voice is who said it: the publication itself, or a person the publication quoted.
A gown described by a critic and a gown named in a caption are not the same placement.
Sentiment is whether the coverage was positive, neutral or negative. Separately, whether it was commercially positive.
A review can admire a collection and doubt it sells. Both are true and both matter.
Source tier is where a title sits in the hierarchy this industry observes. Standing, not traffic.
The Hilum Editorial Score is a 0–100 percentile rank of a placement against your own brand's last ninety days.
It answers a different question from EMV: not what was this worth, but was this good for us. A €40,000 placement is a triumph for one brand and a Tuesday for another. The score reads it against your own record, not an industry average.
Attribution rate is the share of your coverage that traces back to a specific sample you lent.
It is the clearest sign a sample programme is working: every point of it is coverage you can trace to a decision you made.
The season is the umbrella. Selling and media both hang off it. Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter are the main two, with pre-collections between them.
Market is the period when a brand sells a collection to buyers. Every market has its own name for it, and each one is worth using natively.
| Market | Term | Short form |
|---|---|---|
| Italy | Campagna vendite | la campagna |
| France | Campagne de vente | la campagne, les ventes |
| Spain | Campaña de ventas | la campaña |
| Germany | Order, Ordertage | die Order |
| English trade | Market, market week | market |
The German case is the instructive one: the selling period is die Order, while Kampagne belongs to advertising. It is why we use each market's own word rather than translating one.
Pre-collections are Resort or Cruise (roughly May to July) and Pre-Fall (roughly November to January). No runway, showroom only, and at the larger houses widely reported as the majority of turnover.
It is the part of the calendar that pays for the part of the calendar that gets photographed.
Two calendars, often spoken of as one.
A strong fashion week and a strong market are different achievements. They are measured separately because they are separate.
A trade fair — salone in Italian, salon in French, Messe in German — is a shared selling floor: Pitti Uomo, Tranoï, White Milano.
A brand can do its market at a fair instead of running its own showroom.
The showroom is the room where selling happens, whether physical, digital, or both. Loosely, the session itself.
A re-see puts editors in the same room as buyers, a day or two after the show. It is the quiet appointment where a great deal of coverage is actually decided.
A selection is what a buyer picks in the room: the beginning of an order, not yet the order itself.
An order is the commitment, usually written after the appointment against the linesheet and the brand's deadline.
The gap between selection and order is where seasons are won.
Two numbers that are easy to confuse and measure different things.
A brand that watches both is building a wholesale network that compounds.
Two documents for two different moments in the same season.
The lookbook persuades. The linesheet transacts. Knowing which moment calls for which is part of the craft.
MOQ is minimum order quantity: the floor a brand will accept from a stockist.
A size run is the set of sizes a style is produced in, and what a buyer commits to across them.
The delivery window is when the order ships. Also called the drop.
A sample is the physical piece. One garment, one identity, tracked as itself rather than as a line in a stock count.
A sendout is samples lent to an editor, stylist or talent for a specific purpose, with a date they are expected back. A lend, not a gift.
A pull is a stylist's request for pieces, usually for a shoot or a fitting, usually with less notice than anyone would like.
A production is samples reserved and held for something you are making: a shoot, a fitting, a show. The pieces are blocked, not sent.
Two words for the same motion: product given to a creator with no obligation to return it and no contract to post.
Gifting is not a sendout. Nothing comes back, and the measurement is entirely on what the piece earns.
Coverage is the placement itself: the editorial, the review, the credit, the story.
Never press hits. A hit is something that happened to you; coverage is something you earned.
A placement is a single credited appearance within a piece of coverage.
One Met Gala recap can contain fifty placements across fifty brands, each with its own value.
Three flags that change what a placement is worth. A cover is not a mention. An exclusive is not a round-up. First-to-wear is a fact with a date attached, and it is worth having the date.
An editor is the person who decides what runs. Never journalist: different job, different relationship, and the right word in an email is noticed.
A stylist pulls for shoots and for talent. Frequently the most important relationship a brand has, and one worth keeping a record of.
A buyer purchases for a retailer. Often arrives in pairs: one tries, one photographs and converts the price.
The coordinator runs the schedule: the windows, the appointments, the samples, the chasing. The person Hilum is built for.
A showroom, agent or rep sells on behalf of one or more brands, often across several markets.
A few we hold to, because precision is a form of respect.
Hilum runs the season these words describe: samples, send-outs, coverage, and what it earned.