Heart Evangelista Just Beat Paris Hilton at New York Fashion Week

Heart Evangelista is officially the loudest celebrity voice of New York Fashion Week. Fashion analytics firm Launchmetrics credited her with $7.6 million in media impact value during the Spring/Summer 2027 shows, putting her at the top of the event's celebrity rankings, according to a GMA News report published September 30. GMA's report shows Paris Hilton trailing in second with $2.5 million, followed by South Korean actor Jung Hae In with $2.3 million. That puts the Filipina actress more than three times ahead of Hilton, a gap wide enough to settle any debate about who moved the needle in New York.

The top spot is becoming familiar territory for Heart Evangelista. She led the same Launchmetrics celebrity ranking at Paris Haute Couture Week in July with $7.5 million, beating Indian actress Esha Gupta ($1.7 million) and Jennifer Lopez ($1 million), as reported by the Philippine Daily Inquirer. She also topped the celebrity rankings at the previous year's Paris Haute Couture Week with $3.8 million. The Inquirer's report adds that her 21 Paris fashion week Instagram Reels passed 100 million views. That is two Paris crowns in two years, and now New York joins the collection.

What media impact value actually measures

Media impact value is Launchmetrics' proprietary score: it translates a celebrity's reach across digital channels into a dollar amount, so brands can see what a front-row appearance is effectively worth. A rival yardstick points the same direction. Influencer marketing platform Lefty placed Heart Evangelista second on its Top Key Voices list for the same New York season, with $5.7 million in earned media value and an average engagement rate of two point three percent, according to a GMA report published September 22. Lefty defines earned media value as the estimated cost of achieving the same reach through paid advertising. Thai actress Love Pattranite topped that list, with Blackpink's Jisoo also placing. Two firms, two formulas, the same name near the top of both.

Brands watch these rankings because front-row math has become real money. Launchmetrics itself put it plainly: "As fashion weeks grow more competitive every season, knowing exactly where a brand stands against the rest of the industry matters more than ever," as quoted by GMA. The scale is enormous: this year's Paris Haute Couture Week generated $239 million in media impact value in total, according to the Inquirer. A single celebrity driving that kind of figure is exactly why fashion houses fight over who sits where.

An unfiltered season in New York

The Spring/Summer edition kicked off on September 10, and Heart Evangelista arrived in a noticeably looser mood. Philstar reported on September 18 that she dropped the usual polish for candid street-style posts, including a mirror bikini selfie that caught her followers off guard and a friends-taken photo captioned "Tara. Wag kang maarte. Sama na." Her front-row looks stayed sharp: she wore a classic dress to Carolina Herrera and told Philstar, "Classic doesn't mean boring. Being classic is being remembered. Being timeless is being yourself." She also took in Cult Gaia and Prabal Gurung. Philstar's rundown tracks her across venues from The Plaza and the Rainbow Room in Manhattan to Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens and Storm King Art Center, with posts that show her enjoying the week well beyond the photo calls.

Heart Evangelista had company from home. Tennis star Alex Eala made her fashion week debut across the Tory Burch, Calvin Klein, and Michael Kors shows, while model Kelsey Merritt worked the circuit too. MEGA Asia's roundup of the season's style stars frames the turnout as part of Asia's growing footprint at fashion month, with names from Thailand, South Korea, Japan, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Malaysia all attending the same shows. The shift is visible in the front rows, where Asian stars now anchor the celebrity turnout instead of merely filling it out.

The run keeps stretching back

The New York crown continues a run that goes back months. In the autumn and winter womenswear season, Heart Evangelista ranked third among top celebrities with $16 million in media impact value, the only Filipino on the list, according to GMA Entertainment, and placed second in Lefty's Instagram influencer rankings with $19.8 million in earned media value. The same reports name Pia Wurtzbach as another Filipino face holding her own across New York, Milan, and Paris. Back in March, Heart Evangelista ranked fifth among key voices at Paris Fashion Week womenswear with $11.2 million in earned media value, per the Inquirer.

From New York she headed straight to Milan, where GMA spotted her at Diesel's runway show seated next to Yunho of K-pop group Ateez. It has been a busy month for fashion week's celebrity economy either way, from Rihanna's gold skirt suit moment at Paris Fashion Week to the second adidas Entire Studios collection drop.

Heart Evangelista is not slowing down. GMA reported she is set to star in a reunion movie with former love-team partner John Prats, slated for release next February, and she currently hosts the GMA game show The People Have Spoken. For now the scoreboard says what it says: another fashion week, another number one.