New York Times journalist Irina Aleksander’s recent article ‘Sweatpants Forever’ to me has become required reading. Exploring the decline of the fashion industry, the piece exposes how commercial and consumer behaviours have radically altered the sector for the worse.
Simply put, the ‘decline of the fashion industry’ is a term summarising how the way that the fashion industry operates is not environmentally or commercially sustainable. The impact of COVID-19 has accelerated the need for change within the industry and although clothing sales fell 79% in the USA in April, the pandemic is certainly not the cause of this breakdown. Rather it is a catalyst for it.
To fully understand the decline to unsustainability we need to look back to the early 2000s.
Fashion In The Early 2000s
The early 2000s saw a wave of new fashion designers establish themselves as key players within fashion week, most notably people like Derek Lam, Proenza Schouler and Scott Sternberg. All of these brands were in their naissance and had not the facilities to keep up with older more established brands. These new designers had to remain desirable to investors by continuously producing new collections at the same rate as large fashion houses. A lack of capital is a big problem within the industry and if you have no investors then your chances of succeeding are slim.
Because of the Internet, consumers were seeing the collections as soon as they debuted on the runways and were not prepared to wait six months to wear the clothes they were seeing. As a result, the fashion calendar was accelerated to keep up with demand.
But where does that leave smaller brands without the budget to produce at this rate? These smaller brands had to rely on department stores and buyers to purchase their clothes. This meant the creative freedom of designers was limited as they had to keep in mind the marketability of their ready to wear.
Designers financially could not offer a singular department store the exclusivity to sell their clothes. Subsequently, stores asked designers to create exclusive pieces for them instead. Scott Sternberg tells Aleksander “I was basically making stuff I didn’t like because I thought a buyer wanted it, not even the customer”.
With the rapid demand for new clothing, buyers were buying more stock than they could possibly sell and so an RTV (Return to Vendor) policy was adopted by most department stores, meaning that they could return any unsold product to the designers for a refund. A crippling policy for designers who would not be producing so much product if the buyers were not demanding it.
The Devaluation Of Clothes
To make matters worse, at this point in the mid 2000s, the over-saturation of the luxury market was huge with designers producing more clothes than ever before. Stores therefore relied on markdowns to generate sale, meaning that consumers began to be trained to shop on sale. The devaluation of clothes is massive and, as we often see, the behaviours of the luxury market trickle down into the high street. With consumers now being trained to shop on sale, they attach less value in general to their clothes. Our mindset around clothes in turn becomes wasteful and a throwaway culture is born.
The 2008 financial crisis hit fashion, like all industries, very hard. Department stores called in their RTVs and the financial impact on brands was too much to handle, causing lots of that post 9/11 talent to go out of business rapidly. Unfortunately, this was not enough of a wakeup call for the industry to change its ways. Brands who could afford it continued to make clothing at this same pace, sending the industry hurtling to its demise.
Moving Forward
Consumers and new brands are becoming wise to the habits of the fashion industry, and are advocating for change. Department stores are also losing their prominence year upon year and as of August 2020 Macy’s the department store had lost nearly 800 locations. This leaves us wondering what trajectory the fashion industry will take next.
In recent years, a new retail format has become popular with vendors: DTC. DTC brands are ‘direct to consumer brands’, they don’t rely on department stores to buy and sell their products. Instead they do everything in house. Glossier, for example, is a very successful DTC brand.
This format is attractive to business start-ups as they have the freedom to work at their own pace. There is no pressure to stick to the fashion calendar and they usually thrive in a digital space.
DTCs are disrupting the fashion calendar. As of this year, Alessandro Michele at Gucci has decided to slash his fashion shows from five to two, and Saint Laurent are deciding to sit out the upcoming Paris fashion week and set its own schedule moving forward. This a momentous decision for two big brands who have relied off this strict fashion calendar for the last two decades. Hopefully this will influence other big brands to do the same.
I feel optimistic about where the fashion industry is headed. Articles like Irina Alexander’s give me hope that the industry is coming to reflect on its behaviour and Gucci and Saint Laurent’s decisions regarding fashion week have solidified that for me. Whilst the industry certainly feels like it hit a rock bottom, I am confident that changes are in the works and that the industry is finally beginning on an upward trajectory.
Words by Morgan Collins
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