Gucci ranked first in the inaugural release of the Cultural Currency Index (CCI), the first data-driven model created to quantify how cultural engagement translates into measurable market momentum.

The CCI was presented in Milan by Annex, an analytics-driven strategic consulting firm co-founded by Miah Sullivan, a former global CMO and fashion industry veteran. The index has been developed in collaboration with AI-powered creator and social intelligence platform WeArisma.

Set up over the course of two years, CCI is designed to provide brands with an empirical reading of how social media activity, online searches and web traffic are correlated with actual economic indicators, from consumer demand to equity performance.

For Sullivan, the project began with a question she could never answer as CMO: what metric reveals the tangible value of cultural amplification?  “As a CMO, I could always measure exposure but never its consequence,” said Sullivan. “This beta release of the Cultural Currency Index is the first step toward closing that gap, and giving leaders a consistent indicator of when cultural energy begins to translate into business traction,” she added.

CCI’s beta version analysed 20 labels that showed at the Spring/Summer 2026 Milan Fashion Week. Gucci came first, followed by Fendi, Bottega Veneta, Prada and The Attico. Data was drawn from 11 platforms, among them Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Weibo, Douyin, Red (Xiaohongshu), Google, Baidu, Similarweb, and Yahoo!Finance, and structured around three weighted elements: brand involvement, brand popularity, and purchasing intent. Each label was assigned a normalised score between 0 and 100, allowing for comparisons between seasons and markets.

The methodology applied interquartile filtering and distribution adjustments to prevent outlier distortion, generating a stabler picture of brand momentum than exposure-based models. In its first statistical validation, CCI recorded a positive correlation between index scores and share-price outperformance compared to the market, suggesting that shifts in cultural momentum tend to move in step with investor confidence. Although the results are preliminary, they confirmed the objective of pitching CCI as a forward-looking rather than retrospective indicator.

Gucci’s digital-first presentation of ‘The Tiger’ collection generated exceptional engagement and search activity, while Bottega Veneta showed balanced strength across the three elements surveyed. Fendi’s activation of prominent Asian creators demonstrated how a targeted cultural strategy can translate into measurable purchasing intent.

Collectively, the findings highlighted which labels were most effective at converting visibility into business traction. A comprehensive breakdown of the CCI methodology was included in the first report, which was distributed at the press conference for the index’s launch in Milan, the CCI’s first official publication.

Annex will continue to refine and expand the model through additional datasets and peer reviews, ahead of 2026 editions that are set to cover Paris, New York, and Shanghai. Future reports will incorporate longer-term demand indicators and regional weightings to ensure the results are comparable across markets.

CCI is positioned not as a replacement for creative judgement but as a complement to it: a quantitative counterpart to the intuitive assessments that have long defined brand strength. By creating a consistent and transparent framework, Annex aims to provide marketing, finance, and design executives with a shared language for assessing how cultural focus concretely contributes to business performance.

Out of respect for Giorgio Armani’s passing, the Italian label’s memorial show was not included in the index data this season.