How the Pandemic Drove Chinese and Western Fashion to Opposite Ways
Hello and welcome to the 19th 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 analysed how the ‘recession fashion’ is diverging between China and the Western world.
But before we jump into the main article, check the last week’s recap of the Fashion Industry.
Last Week’s Recap
UK Company Claims to Have Created a Solution for Dyeing Pollution
Dyeing is one of the most polluting stages of clothing production. Historically, natural dyes were extracted from plants and flowers and used to colour fabrics. Nowadays, this process is mostly chemical. More specifically, there are over 8,000 chemicals, solvents, and additives used to create colours and effects on fabrics. Many of these chemicals end up in rivers, resulting and harmful environmental consequences. Due to that, Colorifix, a company founded by three Cambridge University scientists, claims to have created a solution. The co-funder Yarkoni stated that they developed a technology with biotechnology and bacteria that dismisses the use of toxic chemicals during the dyeing process. He also claims that their method uses up to 90% less water and up to 40% less energy than the conventional colouring process. The interesting aspect of their project is that the new technique that "copies nature's processes in a lab setting, by replicating the 'DNA message' that codes for color in an organism," according to CNN.
To read more about this new technology, check this article from CNN.
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Saint Laurent Collaboration With Havaianas
For the second year in a row, Saint Laurent is collaborating with iconic Brazilian brand Havaianas in a flip-flops collection. With a wild aesthetic, the pieces have an affordable price of 45 euros and are available exclusively at the Saint Laurent Rive Droite store and on saintlaurentrivedroite.com. This is one of the other presences that Brazil has been making in Paris lately. Back in June, Farm Rio opened a pop-up store at Le Bon Marché and Vanessa Bruno had a whole collection inspired by Rio de Janeiro – which almost crossed the line of cultural appropriation, but fine - that took over the entrance hall of Galleries Lafayette Champs Élysées. Is Brazil about to have a moment in European fashion?
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With Coronavirus, Where Does the ‘Drop Model’ Stands?
HYPEBEAST conducted very interesting interviews with different professionals from different retailers, checking their opinion about how the ‘drop model’ was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. They also asked if the model will have to be revised for the post-pandemic future. If you are not familiar with the ‘drop model’, it consists of releasing products on a specific date, with a number of pieces that keep the release exclusive and desirable. One of the companies that are famous for their drops is Supreme. I really suggest reading their points of view on the subject. Some retailers, such as Browns, even pointed out that drops are actually filling up the sales lost during the lockdown and order delays.
Read the HYPEBEAST article here.
How the Pandemic Drove Chinese and Western Fashion to Opposite Ways
One of my first articles here, and one of my favourites to be honest – was about the transition from maximalism to minimalism that is being seen in fashion due to inequality and the pandemic. Indeed, it’s very clear that the more down-to-earth aesthetic become the norm even for the least financially affected consumers of fashion, and the why I explain in the article (check here). To summarize, even the rich go simpler to theoretically hide their wealth. This is a normal thing during recessions. Fashion gets soberer and goes quiet. But now there is an interesting phenomenon happening. While Western fashion became more minimal with the pandemic, in China, the trend is the complete opposite.
In China, boldness and extravagance are becoming more and more popular and this is creating a complicated scenario for fashion brands. These need to either localise their strategies or decided between going bold for the Chinese consumer or staying sober for the Westerners. But why is Chinese fashion diverging so loudly from the Western aesthetic of the moment? That’s what I will try to explain this week.
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China’s Version of ‘Recession Fashion’
The polarization of the post-pandemic fashion was demonstrated clearly by the “The True-Luxury Global Consumer Insight Survey,” which was conducted by the consultancy BCG in June. In China, a preference for ‘extra’ aesthetic in luxury increased 14%, while it dropped 9% in the Western. The display of maximalism in the Chinese market was also seen at the Louis Vuitton Men’s SS21 collection presented at the brand’s show in Shanghai and in the controversial Balenciaga Qixi (Chinese Valentine’s Day) campaign. This behaviour of consumers to walk towards extravagance during a recession such as the one the pandemic brought in 2020 is a curious phenomenon. But how did this happen?
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It’s About the Lesson Each Region Got From the Pandemic
The mainstream narratives from the devastation of the Covid-19 outbreak were completely different in the West and China. In the West, the younger population saw the pandemic and its socio-economic impacts as a collapse in the system. For the Westerns, the virus outbreak worsened the problematic inequality and is leaving a generational whole study and career-wise. Millennials and Gen Z people see the event as something that will negatively impact the rest of their lives. This negative narrative of the pandemic consequences did not fully enter China due to the famous Great Fire Wall, which controls the information that enters and is consumed in the country. Therefore, the pessimist Western point of view of the pandemic was left out of the Chinese narrative.
In fact, in China, the perceptions of the pandemic impact were completely different. Many Chinese share a sentiment of renewed faith in their government, while also celebrating a trust in China’s collectivist social structures. Indeed, Chinese nationals are the most optimistic consumer group among all respondents of BCG’s survey. 77% of the Chinese respondents expressed the belief in rapid social recovery after the crisis, compared to the much lower 43% average.
This optimistic and hopeful post-pandemic narrative in China resulted in higher consumer confidence among the country’s citizens. It also made consumers feel more reassured and comfortable with their social-economic positions. A survey by the wealth research firm Altiant, for example, demonstrated the discrepancy in self and consumer confidence between the West and China. According to the research, while over a third of the wealthy consumers in France, UK, and the US stated the pandemic made them question their consumption of luxury products; only 16% of Chinese respondents also had these second thoughts.
Therefore, full of confidence, Chinese consumers are pursuing the shiny and bold trends in fashion. However, China is still recovering from the lockdown measures that shook consumer behaviour and fashion sales in the country. As every other country, the Chinese fashion market lost a lot of money with the pandemic and it is still not fully back to pre-pandemic sales performance. Thus, even though consumers are buying bold fashion, they are still mostly buying less fashion.
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How Will Brands Manage this Extreme Polarization of Trends?
This difference in overall aesthetic between China and the West will demand fashion houses to localise more their strategies. According to Bain & Company, in 2019, China represented 35% of the luxury market spending and 90% of the growth in the personal luxury goods market came from Chinese consumers alone. Bain also stated that China is the only hope of luxury brands for full recovery from the pandemic financial crisis. Due to that, it is not too farfetched to think that brands will end up adapting stylistically to fit the Chinese market.
Localisation is no news for fashion brands that entered the Chinese market. The different Chinese consumer behaviour already made brands adapt to the country’s digital norms, for example. Many brands had to become professionals on the e-commerce platforms and social media used by Chinese consumers, such as WeChat, Taobao and Weibo. The same will probably happen to the aesthetic of collections from now on. As Susanna Nicoletti, a senior marketing executive and the lecturer at Istituto Marangoni stated to Jing Daily - the fashion world will inevitably adapt to China’s extravagant taste because of business pressure.
For a successful fashion brand, the problem of adapting too much is losing its position as a trendsetter and becoming a trend follower. Therefore, changing creativity for reactivity. A brand can also face the risk of neglecting too much the Western market while trying to keep up with the Chinese one.
Finally, it all depends on what are the priorities of which brands. With the fashion market shifting towards China, it may be risky to keep following only Eurocentric aesthetics and beauty standards. Some fashion brands, such as Gucci, have the majority of its sales being done in China. For these the change is inevitable. It will all depend on how relevant the Chinese or Western markets are for which brand. Therefore, it is unclear how the fashion industry will consolidate in this post-pandemic and extremely volatile moment, but brands have to keep an eye on every little change happening around the globe. And you, what is your opinion about this polarized scenario?
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!
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