Copenhagen Fashion Week Review
Hello and welcome to the 18th issue of moderated, a newsletter created to dive into insights and phenomenons in the Fashion Industry. It also has a curation and summary of the most talked last week’s events of the industry, offering further readings for more details.
If you are new here, welcome! I hope I can somehow help you to keep up with the fast-paced Fashion Industry. If you haven’t subscribed yet to receive a weekly issue by e-mail, you can do it just by clicking below.
In this week’s moderated, I did a review of the Copenhagen Fashion Week, while also analysing if the new hybrid format worked well or not.
But before we jump into the main article, check the last week’s recap of the Fashion Industry.
Last Week’s Recap
Selfridges Partners With Clothing Rental Company HURR
At a challenging time for UK retail, Selfridges is differentiating itself by offering fashion items to rent in a partnership with HURR. The new strategy, which aims to attract younger and more ecologically conscious consumers, consists of over 100 fashion items from more than 40 different labels to be rented for up to 20 days. Selfridges is also planning to sell a selection of vintage items in partnership with online second-hand clothing retailer Vestiaire Collective. From mid-October, this new platform will allow clients to sell used accessories to the store in exchange for credits.
…
Victoria’s Secret Revenues Dropped Less Than Expected
You know a year is tough when a 40% year-over-year drop in revenue is considered good news. Victoria’s Secret pre-announced its second-quarter revenue and it was better than what most analysts expected. Some even saw the less-extreme-than-expected drop in revenues as a sign of the brand slowly recovering from the crisis it brought to itself over the last years. Indeed the brand has been making many changes. In the branding sphere, it has distanced itself from the over-the-top “sexy” image and started to include a more diverse cast of models. Changes are also being made at the corporate level, where the parent brand L Brands is initiating the process of splitting VS and Bath & Body Works into independent brands. However, Victoria’s Secret still has a long way to recovery, since the results are not yet out of the red.
…
Retailers Create Coalition to Fight Counterfeit Products Online In the US
A new coalition was launched in the United States with the goal of forcing e-commerce companies such as Amazon and eBay to take stronger measures to fight stolen or counterfeit goods sold on their platforms. The new lobbying group is being funded by the industry association that represents giants such as Walmart, Best Buy, and Target. Called ‘The Buy Safe America Coalition’, the new group demands new legislation that would require digital marketplaces to verify information about third-party merchants. To read more about this new coalition and its cause, check this article from Business of Fashion.
…
Keeping Track of Covid-19 Financial Crisis Impact
Farfetch Sales Rise to a Record Level During Lockdown
M&S to Cut 7,000 jobs over the next months
Copenhagen Fashion Week Review
If you didn’t know Copenhagen Fashion Week was a thing, no worries, it wasn’t really until not that long ago. However, since Scandi girls became the coolest girls on earth (sorry French girls), many brands from Scandinavia started to conquer a larger market. With that, so did Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW). This season’s event, that happened last week, mixed physical and digital, due to the still unstable situation of Covid-19. I decided to review the event, telling you the story of how Copenhagen Fashion Week came to be so successful and if its hybrid format worked or not.
.
How CPHFW Became One of the Coolest Fashion Weeks
Scandinavian fashion has always been recognized for being chic, minimal, and effortless. However, the market was still mostly taken by the major fashion capitals: New York, London, Milan, and Paris. For years, editors, buyers, celebrities and influencers moved across the US and Europe to attend to these four capitals' fashion weeks. The traditional fashion weeks are always filled up with large productions, massive events, many photographers, and elaborate street style.
Then, Copenhagen Fashion Week started to surface as a more real, tangible, and down-to-earth fashion event. And indeed it is. The city of Copenhagen is a great representation of the Scandi culture. It has a palatable taste in modernism and minimalism, is surrounded by nature and offers a great quality of life with social support from the government. These all make CPHFW a more grounded event. Away from the intense street style paparazzi and untenable packed show schedules, CPHFW focuses on three main things: tasteful, wearable, and sustainable fashion.
Another aspect that makes the Copenhagen Fashion Week feel more relatable is the pricing point of most brands that show at the event. The prices of these Nordic brands are usually more affordable than, for example, its French or Italian competitors. Finally, CPHFW also has a serious plan to become more and more sustainable throughout the years, demanding that brands follow the plan to keep being part of the event. Therefore, Copenhagen Fashion Week came as a break from the major fashion weeks, a pause with new airs and sustainability in mind for the fashion scene.
.
Did the Phygital Format Work for Copenhagen Fashion Week?
This year, the CPHFW suffered as the many others with the limitations imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, different from the previous fashion weeks made since the virus’ outbreak, Copenhagen Fashion Week decided to mix digital and physical formats, creating a hybrid event. With 72 hours of live-stream of all events that were being hosted, the event offered a space for those who could not attend. However, even if the Scandinavian event had physical events, those were significantly smaller. Some of the shows that usually have around 700 guests had to limit the list to only 50 people. This meant fewer celebrities and influencers attending the event.
An important aspect of the success of Copenhagen Fashion Week is the tribes of influencers that star the well-know street style photos of the event. Without many influencers, the engagement clearly fell. The result was lower online reach and engagement with the brands participating in the CPHFW.
Based on the figures Tribe Dynamics shared with Vogue, CPHFW earned media value decreased this year. Conor Begley, co-founder and president of Tribe Dynamics, explained the drop:
“The primary content created about brands historically during fashion week was the outfits that people wore to the show. Now that people aren't getting dressed up for the shows, the opportunity to talk about brands is much lower.”
Indeed the social media engagement fell drastically. This year, Stine Goya had the highest social media engagement in CPHFW, reaching 199 million, according to the influencer and data firm Captiv8. Even though this figure is not low, is far from last year’s top brand, Baum und Pferdgarten’s 276 million engagement. Overall, the social media engagement of the fashion event was 87% lower than the previous season in January, according to Traackr.
This data clearly demonstrates the importance of hosting events for a large list of guests in creating engagement with consumers and retailers. However, for the time's sake, the event had a better performance in comparison to other attempts such as London, Shangai, and Paris Fashion Week. For example, the online platform created for Copenhagen Fashion Week was a little confusing to use, but a hundred times better than London Fashion Week’s website. CPHFW also posted all the videos of the shows and presentations on youtube for easy access, which made it more accessible - quite aligned with the fashion week’s branding. Therefore, in my opinion, CPHFW is so far the best we can do with a ready-to-wear fashion week at times like these when traveling became more complicated and events can’t have too many people grouped.
Now let’s jump to the actual highlights of this season’s Copenhagen Fashion Week - in my opinion of course.
…
CPHFW Review
Ganni
Probably one of the most well known Danish fashion brands, Ganni opened the CPHFW with a different proposition. The brand staged a socially-distanced exhibition for its guests. Some of the highlights of the art experience were the hand-knitted wall sculpture made from Levi’s deadstock denim by Hayley Blomquist; the life-sized cutouts installation by photographer Rosie Marks; and the dance film by choreographer Maria “Decida” Wahlberg. The exhibition also had on the side a kiosk offering the new collab collection of Ganni and Levi’s made of upcycled denim and available only for rent, reinforcing the brand’s approach to sustainability.
.
Helmstedt
Emilie Helmstedt installed a surrealist papier-mâché heart sculpture made by herself in a central square. Then, she hosted one of the few live shows of this season’s CPHFW, with models wearing her sweet and feminine collection around the sculpture, while carrying other art pieces that sort of complemented the heart. The art installation is a celebration of love and human connection and it will travel across Copenhagen in the next month. “It’s my way of spreading some love around,” stated the designer during a live-stream Q&A. The spread of love was also the perfectly accomplished inspiration for her Spring 21 collection.
.
Rains
The minimal and functional brand revealed its Spring Summer 21 collection called ‘Never Lost’ in a digital show with an unexpected format. The live-stream consisted of a group of models wearing the collection inside an abandoned pool taken by nature. The interesting thing is that the viewer can change cameras of the presentation in the website built for it, offering many different points of view of the collection and strategic close-ups. The pieces themselves were minimal with sober colours and emanated the effortlessly cool aesthetic of the brand.
You can check Rains’s presentation here.
.
Stine Goya
The designer Stine Goya decided to not host a physical runway show, but instead prepared a fashion film in its recently redecorated office. Named ‘House of Goya’, the video presented the diverse cast made of models, Danish celebrities and employees of the brand walking and dancing around the building while wearing the new collection. Goya is specialized in joy and colours and that’s exactly what she presented through her new pieces for SS21. According to the brand, this collection was 50% smaller than usual in order to be more sustainably conscious. It also increased by 10% the number of sustainable fabrics, if compared to the previous collection.
Thank you for reading this week’s moderated and next Tuesday I will be back with more. If you haven’t already, subscribe below to receive the moderated newsletter straight to your email. If you really liked this week’s article, share this post with friends and family - and don’t forget to leave a like! :)
Bye-bye and see you next week!
About the author behind the text
About the artist behind the illustrations
If you want, send suggestions, comments or a hi to luizapplima@gmail.com