The World’s Most Elegant Cities - The Top Ten Ranked

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Category: Haute Travel

Published on Friday, 27 October 2017 08:44

Written by Zalando Agency

Online fashion store Zalando have conducted a study that evaluates and ranks the world’s most elegant cities. To score highly, essential factors include a thriving fashion scene, culturally and historically significant architecture, high tourism desirability, and affordable access as markers of an elegant lifestyle.

"Elegance is not just about appearance but also manner.” comments Kasia Luczak, Trendscouting Manager at Zalando. “It evokes a sort of simplicity as well as restrained beauty. Probably the most famous Parisian, Coco Chanel once said that ‘Elegance is refusal’. This is also where style differs from fashion – in the conscious choice between abundance and modesty.”

Zalando reveal the top 80 most elegant cities, ranked by influential fashion and architecture experts, and 7 other relevant factors

• Paris is the world’s most elegant city, and was awarded maximum points by fashion and architecture experts
• London scored second place overall, and ranked first for fashion schools and desirability
• Italian cities ranked strongly, with four cities placing within the top 10

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In order to understand which cities best embody elegance, a list of 400 destinations renowned for their fashion scene, and their cultural and historical significance were originally included in the research. Along with Zalando’s own fashion expertise, more than 5,000 fashion and architecture experts were also consulted for their views, resulting in a final shortlist of 80 cities.

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The results of the research are based on the definition of elegance: “graceful and stylish in appearance or manner.” To achieve this, the study was divided in three sections. The first section pertains to the elegance in the infrastructure and architecture of a city, including the desirability of the city by visitors. The second section looks at fashion factors associated with elegance. 

The final section ranks how affordable it is to live an elegant lifestyle in the city, based on PPP (Purchasing Power Parity). The ranking is based on these three scores added together.

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Kasia Luczak, Trendscouting Manager at Zalando: “Elegance shouldn’t be seen as a synonym of what’s expensive and luxurious, it has also little to do with following latest fashions – it means being true to oneself and rather defining beauty than submitting to its standards. In terms of cities, it’s a lot about the urban and architectural character, but also more elusive elements such as atmosphere and historical charm, which Paris definitely has."

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Overall, the top ten most elegant cities are revealed below. The subcategories have been combined into three main categories for ease of viewing, but the full results of each of the nine criteria can be viewed on the results page: www.zalando.co.uk/worlds-most-elegant-cities

Results: Top Ten Most Elegant Cities  

Further Insights (for detailed descriptions of each criteria, please refer to Methodology underneath)

For the Fashion Schools Score, London ranked first followed by Paris and New York.

For the Fashion Capital Score, Paris ranked first followed by New York and London.

For the Fashion Journalist Perception Score, Paris ranked first followed by Milan and New York.

For the Desirability by Visitors Score, London ranked first followed by Singapore and Paris

For the Point of Entry Score, Barcelona ranked first followed by Auckland and Melbourne.

For the Architecture Score, Paris ranked first followed by Florence and Venice.

For the Cleanliness Score, Wellington ranked first followed by Stuttgart and Reykjavik.

For the Architecture Journalist Score, Paris ranked first followed by Florence and Venice.

For the Accessibility Score, Cape Town ranked first followed by Marseille and Sevilla.

For full results of the ranking, please visit the results page here: www.zalando.co.uk/worlds-most-elegant-cities

About Zalando: Zalando (https://corporate.zalando.com) is Europe’s leading online fashion platform for women, men and children. We offer our customers a one-stop, convenient shopping experience with an extensive selection of fashion articles including shoes, apparel and accessories, with free delivery and returns. Our assortment of almost 2,000 international brands ranges from popular global brands, fast fashion and local brands, and is complemented by our private label products.

Our localized offering addresses the distinct preferences of our customers in each of the 15 European markets we serve: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland and the United Kingdom.

Our logistics network with four centrally located fulfillment centers in Germany allows us to efficiently serve our customers throughout Europe, supported by warehouses in Northern Italy and France with a focus on local customer needs.

We believe that our integration of fashion, operations and online technology give us the capability to deliver a compelling value proposition to both our customers and fashion brand partners. Zalando’s shops attract about 200 million visits per month. In the second quarter of 2017, 70 percent of traffic came from mobile devices, resulting in 21.2 million active customers by the end of the quarter.

Methodology

In order to create a comprehensive score that included all the different categories, all factors were ranked between 0 and 5. This score was obtained directly from the raw data implementing a score of the form:

Score(i) = 5 ( ( (x(i) - x(min) ) / ( (x(max) - x(min) ) )

Finally, each of the factors form part of one category: Fashion, Urban and Accessibility. Each of the aforementioned categories are weighted differently, 50% accounting for Fashion Factors, 40% for Urban Factors and, finally, 10% for Accessibility. The final score of the city is then:

Final Score = 50% Fashion + 40% Urban + 10% Accessibility

Fashion Factors

The Fashion Schools score was calculated using the number of fashion schools from each city appearing on international rankings, as well as the geographical directory listings of all fashion schools in the metropolitan area, with double weight given to the “top” ranked fashion schools.

The Fashion Capital score represents the number of main fashion ateliers, number of designers, fashion week's, shows, expos and general events in the city, per year as well as how many world famous fashion designers have lived and worked in these cities.

To achieve the Fashion Expert Perception score, we asked over two thousand fashion journalists to rank each city they are familiar with on a 5 point scale according to perceived elegance.

Urban Factors

The cities’ Desirability by Visitors score was ranked according to the number of overnight visitors per year with the most recent data available. Data came from the UN WTO as well as from local tourism boards.

The Points of Entry score was included because airports and train stations are responsible for people's first impressions of a new city. The score in this category was calculated using global rankings of transport hubs as well as online customer reviews.

The Architecture score was scored by ranking each city by the number of UNESCO cultural heritage sites, museums, opera houses, concert halls, and protected buildings per surface area of the city.

The Cleanliness score was calculated inversely based on the results of various surveys regarding the perception of pollution and cleanliness in each city, by its residents.

For the Expert Perception on Architecture score, we asked over two thousand architecture journalists to rank each city on a 5 point scale according to perceived elegance of the city‘s architecture.

Accessibility

The Accessibility score ranks how affordable each city is for its residents according to the Local Purchasing Power (PPP) as well as the costs of several items associated with an elegant lifestyle (theater tickets, upmarket table wine, high quality footwear, etc.). Here, the research team attempted to quantify which cities offer accessibility in culture and fashion.