MILAN — It was only a matter of time before Prada’s endorsement of K-pop would inch up a notch: The seven members of South Korean music sensation Enhypen have been named the posh brand’s latest ambassadors.

Jungwon, Heeseung, Jay, Jake, Sunghoon, Sunoo and Ni-Ki attended their first Prada runway show together last January in Milan. Outside Fondazione Prada, the venue for the men’s fall 2023 fashion show, crowds erupted because the seven members stepped out to greet fans, wearing head-to-toe Prada looks from the lads’s spring 2023 collection, which was heavy on denim sets and boxy blazers.

The group, which boasts greater than 12.5 million fans on Instagram alone, helped the Italian label secure $40.4 million in media impact value, in response to tallies of January fashion weeks compiled by data firm Launchmetrics.

Driven by their attendance, 61 percent of Prada’s MIV last January was generated by celebrities and roughly half of it originated from the Asia Pacific region, with other Korean stars including Jaehyun, The Boyz and Twice also drawing attention.

“We’re delighted and honored to be a component of this partnership as latest brand ambassadors of Prada. The synergy Prada and Enhypen will create is something we’re very excited to witness and greatly looking forward to,” the boy band said in an announcement.

Enhypen was formed in 2020 through the survival competition show “I-Land” and debuted their first prolonged play, titled “Border: Day One,” on Nov. 30 that yr, having already amassed greater than 1 million followers on social media platforms TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and V Live.

The lead single, “Given-Taken,” was successful and propelled the EP’s success, which became the highest-selling album by a K-pop group introduced in 2020. In 2021, the boy band released its first studio album, “Dimension: Dilemma,” with preorders surpassing 600,000 copies in six days. Enhypen launched into their first world tour, called “Manifesto,” in September 2022, starting in Seoul and ending within the Philippines in February. It touched down within the U.S. ,Thailand and Japan. Their second studio album and first Japanese album, titled “Sadame,” bowed last October.

The band’s second world tour kicks off at the top of July in Seoul and is poised to stop by Tokyo and the U.S., with more dates to be announced.

The K-pop stars join other Prada ambassadors including Scarlett Johansson, Hunter Schafer, Letitia Wright, Amanda Gorman, Cai Xukun, Jaehyun and Louis Partridge, amongst other talents.

In recent times, the influence of K-pop has grow to be more visible in the worldwide luxury market.

On the lads’s front, earlier this yr Dior signed BTS member Jimin as a worldwide ambassador; Valentino named BTS member Suga as a brand ambassador, and Givenchy unveiled Taeyang, a member of Big Bang and a solo artist, as its newest brand ambassador.

After the pandemic, the local luxury market has registered upbeat growth. In response to Euromonitor, luxury retail value sales in South Korea is projected to grow 8 percent year-on-year to 19.4 trillion South Korean won, or $15 billion, in 2022.

In response to a Morgan Stanley report, with a vibrant middle-class and upper-middle-class demographic, South Korean nationals are actually the world’s biggest spenders per capita on personal luxury goods. At $325 per capita, it’s higher than $280 within the U.S., $210 in Japan and $55 in China.

Morgan Stanley estimates that South Korean nationals now account for “10 percent or more” of the brand’s total retail sales for Prada, Bottega Veneta, Burberry and Moncler.