The Fashion Calendar Game: How Changes in Fashion Weeks Could Affect Fast Fashion Retailers?
Hello and welcome to the sixth week 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 here for the first time, nice to meet you! 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 just by clicking below.
This week’s moderated is about the fashion calendar, more specifically the luxury one, and how it directly affects fast fashion. I explored the proposals to change the fashion calendar made by brands and designers and analysed how these could impact fast fashion retailers.
But before we jump into the main article, check the last week’s recap of the Fashion Industry.
Last Week’s Recap
Met Gala 2020 Is Officially Cancelled
The Met Gala is considered by many fashion’s most glamorous event. This year, the gala that usually happens on the first Monday of May, had been postponed in March. However, last week, The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that the 2020 Met Gala is officially cancelled. Every year, the event is the main fundraiser for the Costume Institute, funding exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and capital improvements. In 2019, the gala alone raised a reported US$15 million. Even though the party is cancelled, the exhibition it supposed to promote is scheduled to be available from October 29 to February 7, 2021. This year’s exhibition, called “About Time: Fashion and Duration”, will explore the fashion from the year 1870 to present, celebrating Met’s 150th anniversary.
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Gucci Left Fashion Calendar
Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s Creative Director, announced at the beginning of this week that the brand will no longer follow the established spring/summer, autumn/winter, cruise and pre-fall seasons of the fashion calendar. As he stated: “I think these are stale and underfed words … clothes should have a longer life than that which these words attributed to them”. Gucci will go seasonless, with just two fashion shows/presentations per year. The announcement comes after proposals made by Dries Van Noten and many other designers shook the industry by desiring to change the whole fashion calendar. Gucci made a first brave move towards change, the question is: will other brands follow?
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In the US and France, Fashion Stores Still Didn’t Recover Foot Traffic
It has been two weeks since stores reopened in France and in some states in the US, and sales are not booming. According to The Guardian, many consumers don’t see a point in purchasing fashion without a place to wear and show it. In the first week after lockdown, Paris had a short craze with the reopening of fashion retail, with lines to enter stores such as Louis Vuitton. This initial excitement passed, and, last week, shops were almost empty and sales assistants confirmed traffic went down. The same in the US, where stores’ foot traffic was 92% lower than the same period last year, according to location-data provider Prodco Analytics. To be fair, the rigid sanitizing measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 also had a bad impact on the shopping experience, which may be making even less appealing to go out to shop.
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In China, Live-streaming Is Selling Fashion
Amid the lockdown measures in China, fashion brands are adventuring themselves in a new format to sell products: live-streams. Called live-commerce, this format of sales is having a moment in China and, according to iiMedia, is projected to double the generated revenues from last year, going up to US$129 billion in 2020. Burberry, for example, received at their store a Weibo large influencer (or, as they are called locally, a KOL, Key Opinion Leader) with over 6 million followers. She live-streamed her shopping experience at Burberry on the Tmall Live platform, where over 1.4 million people tuned in to watch. One hour later, many of the Spring/Summer 2020 products viewed on the broadcast were sold out.
This mix of sales and entertainment proven to be a success in the country. The number of sellers on TaoBao Live platform increased by 719% this year. In fashion luxury, Louis Vuitton was the first to use the strategy and it had mixed opinions about its approach to it, with critics stating it didn’t match the brand’s image. This is risky territory for luxury brands and it needs to be very well thought to make sense, but if it does, it pays off. To read more about live-commerce in China, check this and this articles.
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Swarovski Appoints Its First Global Creative Director - Giovanna Battaglia
Last week, Swarovski announced its first-ever global creative director. The new role went to Giovanna Battaglia, who is part of the company since 2016. She will lead the brand’s product design and overall creative vision. Spring/Summer 2021 will be her first signed collection for Swarovski. Before this position, Battaglia was the creative director of Swarovski’s B2B division.
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Elle Is Coming Back to Brazil
After a year and a half out of business, Elle Brasil is coming back this month. The magazine, which had been discontinued by the publisher Editora Abril, is now going to be under the group Papaki. The new era of the Brazilian Elle will be mostly online, with just four print editions per year. The idea is to make a very interactive monthly issue online and make the print issues a premium and collection product.
For the group Lagardère, which owns the Elle brand worldwide, this is good news. Brazil was one of Elle’s most important markets and they were looking for a new partner to license the brand in the country. The gap that the end of the magazine left in Brazil was never properly filled again. On Brazilian Elle’s Instagram, the number of followers barely changed, even after almost two years without any posts. The good news about Elle also came right after the Brazilian Vogue suffered backlash for its May cover with Gisele Bündchen wearing Prada. Titled “the new normal”, Vogue May issue wanted to state that the post-pandemic fashion would be simpler, but it was criticised for being out of touch with most Brazilians reality of simplicity, especially in the middle of a pandemic.
The Fashion Calendar Game: How Changes in Fashion Weeks Could Affect Fast Fashion Retailers?
Since this whole coronavirus pandemic started, every single fashion publication on earth has been talking about how the fashion calendar needs to change. Then, London and Milan Fashion Weeks decided to merge men's and womenswear into online events in July. Finally, the cherry on top, two proposals from two different groups of brands, and designers were released with a message in common: the fashion calendar needs to change. And then, while we were still processing all this, Gucci made the first move - it announced it would stop following the fashion calendar for good.
The fashion calendar is dictated by the high-end sector, basically based on two things: when are fashion weeks and when will products arrive at stores. Everything before, in the middle and after that, adapts itself to fit these timings - be that in the high-end or high street sectors. This happens because it's during fashion weeks that luxury brands and designers present their couture or ready to wear collections that cascade down to the whole fashion industry. But, as mentioned, there are countless articles about how the pandemic made the need for the fashion calendar to change, urgent. I decided to go a bit deeper to bring some newness to the conversation. For that, I took into consideration my experiences in buying, product development, and design in the fast fashion industry. Thus, my goal became to try answering the following question: if these proposed changes in the fashion calendar are actually implemented, how will it affect fast fashion?
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The Knock-Off Game
No news for anyone that fast fashion and other companies get “inspired” by runways' designs and make more affordable versions of them. Sometimes, they commit so hard to knock off these designs that they end up getting sued. For example, just last year, Versace sued Fashion Nova for the knock-off of J-lo’s Grammys dress.
Images Fashion nova
However, most companies manage to change just enough, so knock offs don't pass legal boundaries. That is possible because fashion is usually way less legally protected than other creative sectors, such as music, art, and film. Due to that, brands such as Zara and H&M became experts at the art of copying luxury pieces. But copying runway looks is nothing new. Coco Chanel even described knock offs as inevitable and a the “ransom of success”. There was a time when designers and copycats could healthily coexist. This is actually how the industry works for a long time: luxury brands and designers debut their collections during fashion weeks, then middle range and high street retailers follow these trends. But not anymore. What actually changed is when which products arrive at stores.
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It’s a ‘Who Is Faster’ Game
One of the advantages of paying for luxury used to be having first access to the latest trends. That has certainly changed. I mean, nothing changed from the luxury side. As usual, collections presented on fashion weeks hit stores around six months later. For example, the collection from a fashion show held in February will start arriving at stores around July/August. In the southern hemisphere, the delay is even longer. There, collections can arrive until 1 year after fashion weeks, because seasons are the contrary of the northern part of the globe. The fashion calendar from the high-end perspective remains the same, and maybe that is the issue.
During recent years, fast fashion companies preyed on this calendar and manage to create a successful business model. With technology, the scale of economy, and complex logistics operations, these retailers found a way to make the best out of the fashion calendar. They develop products highly inspired on runway shows and then manage to offer these faster than the brands and designers themselves. Some fast fashion companies can develop, produce, and deliver these products as fast as 2 weeks after fashion shows. For example, very often, a trend created by Dior in its fashion show in February can be found in March/April at Zara stores. But Dior itself will just have the trend in its stores around six months later. This unnecessary gap between fashion week and product delivery serves better the indirect competitors than designers and high-end brands themselves.
Whenever these trends finally hit luxury stores, the consumer has already seen it in every fast fashion website and retail store. Therefore, the life span of the product was already shortened. This results in brands having to discount their products outside sales seasons, which not only compromises margins but also affects brand equity. As stated by Elaine Maguire O’Connor, a fashion law lecturer, “If the luxury customer has seen that design in Primark or H&M, then they’re less likely to pay all that money.”
The thing is that this is not news at all. Specialists have been discussing the need to review these timings for a long time, but we all know how the fashion industry is attached to its traditions. The need for change was clear; fashion just needed a little push to finally do it. Ok, maybe coronavirus pushed it a bit too hard (way too hard), but the industry is finally making some real moves to improve this situation.
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Change Game Strategies
The lockdown measures due to the pandemic resulted in fashion brands with accumulate inventories. Thus, high-end brands need to find a solution to the inventory crisis outside the image damaging discounting. Covid-19 also impacted the format of fashion weeks. Three out of the four major fashion weeks decided to hold their events online, with two of them bringing womenswear that use to be in September to July, to be presented with menswear. But then, since the whole format of fashion weeks was being questioned and reviewed, and discounting was a preoccupation too, two groups of designers made two proposals with a common goal – revise the whole fashion calendar.
The first proposal was the “Open Letter to the Fashion Industry”, lead by Dries van Noten and backed up by a vast team of well-know names of the industry, such as Tory Burch, Proenza Schouler's Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez. The letter proposed the reallocation of collections to their actual seasons. This means Spring/Summer collections being available from February to July and Autumn/Winter sent to stores from August to January (Northern-Hemisphere). That sounds obvious to you? It kind of is right? But that’s not how things were working.
I will make this analysis based on the seasons in the north of the globe. The south of the globe, where seasons are contrary to the north, can be a full article that I can make in the future because things get even more complex and make even less sense. Thus, I won't be including it here.
So, follow me. Nowadays, Spring/Summer collections are arriving in stores in January, which is basically high winter. Autumn/Winter collections are available in July, which is in the middle of summer. Therefore, the discounting of Spring/Summer collections starts at the end of May or the beginning of June to give space for Fall/Winter clothes to be displayed. If you haven't caught the issue, here it is: Spring/Summer garments are on sale in June, despite the fact that summer has barely started. It doesn’t make sense.
The proposal made by Dries Van Noten basically suggested placing collections to when consumers actually need them. I mean, not many people actually want to buy summer clothes in January. Then, knowing there is a big chance they will be on sale once it is warm enough to use them, makes it even less appealing. With these new timings, brands could avoid deep out-of-season discounting.
Then, with the facilitation of Business of Fashion, a second proposal was created by a group of designers and brands. The group included Phillip Lim, Isabel Marant, Proenza Schouler, and many others. Called #rewiringfashion, the proposal suggested changes in three main areas in the fashion industry. Among these areas was the fashion calendar. And this proposal enriched the previous one, on the top of placing collections to its seasons, they also want to touch on fashion weeks.
Remember when I mentioned collections arrive at stores six months after they debuted on the runway? This proposal suggested finishing with this gap between shows and the arrival of collections in stores. In the backstage, that means changing the whole fashion calendar. For consumers, however, the "only" change would be that, fashion weeks at the beginning of the year would have Spring/Summer collections and the shows in the middle of the year would present Autumn/Winter (contrary to how it is now). This would result in pieces debuting on runways right before they arrive at stores. The proposal itself made a chart to explain this.
This approach would fit more the nowadays rhythm of fashion consumers. Fashion shoppers got used to the instant gratification that the Internet gives and that the luxury fashion calendar took too long to adapt to it. In this new format, the whole investment of fashion shows to create a buzz could generate more sales, once consumers would still be invested in the hype from shows when garments became available to them.
Finally, the start of the materialization of this discussion came with Gucci's decision to go season-less. The announcement was made by the brand’s creative director, Alessandro Michele. Gucci also stated that it will have just two show/presentations per year, abandoning the traditional fashion calendar. The change started and the rest of the industry needs to be very alert…including fast fashion.
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New Rules, New Game
As mentioned, fast fashion companies do base their collections on trends debuted during fashion weeks. Due to their large and productive supply chain, very often, fast fashion retailers manage to offer these trends even before the brands that created them.
With the window between fashion weeks and the arrival of collections getting shorter, fast fashion will lose this competitive factor. Yes, Zara can design, produce, and deliver some products at stores in two weeks. But the retailer can't do that to all its products and not every company can be this fast. These extremely fast productions deliveries can be called “response products”, even though they have different names in different companies. The process works more or less like this (with changes between different retailers):
Fast fashion retailers use most of their budgets for collections planned months in advance, which include from basic to trendy products. The trendy items are based on information from trend forecasters and the season's fashion week (that nowadays happens six months before). However, a smaller part of the budget is saved to be spent on fast trends that companies couldn't predict. These trends can be a random style that surged, a celebrity's outfit, or, finally, a product that went viral during the lastest fashion week. The items created from these fast trends are "response products". Only a small budget is saved for them because just having "response products" is not financially sustainable. Producing fast is expensive, meaning lower margins. For fast fashion companies, investing in this type of production is worth it because trends attract clients to stores. Once in, these clients usually end up buying more core and basic products, but without the trends, many wouldn't even come into the retailer.
Therefore, fast fashion brands do manage to have many trends before high fashion, but most products inspired on the runway arrive at the same as high-end products - around six months after fashion weeks.
With the end of the gap between fashion weeks and collections in-store, fast fashion will have to review its knock-off strategies. Fast fashion retailers won’t be able to guess everything that will be in fashion week. They also can’t afford to produce 100% of their collections the way “response products” are produced. So, will fashion go back to how it was before? Trends could, once again, be available in the old order: from luxury brands and designers to then, after a while, fast fashion. And when I say a while, I mean it could be as long as one year, because what's the use of swimwear trends six months after summer?
Or… fast fashion companies will find a way to be even faster. A lot has been talked about bringing production back to local suppliers to improve inventory control. This could be an option for some companies to be more responsive to fashion weeks, once transporting clothes takes time. Planes can be fast, but they are extremely expensive, in most cases not worth it at all. Therefore, ships transport most fashion products produced far from the country where they will be sold. A product made in China, for example, takes around a month to arrive in central Europe or around two months to get to Brazil. Production varies a lot. An order of 10 thousand pieces, for example, can take from two weeks to two months to be produced; it all depends on how much you pay to be the supplier's priority.
This means that, in a good scenario, it can take 2 months to produce abroad and receive products in ports. This all not even taking into consideration the design, product development, negotiations, and distribution to stores once in the country (which varies a lot, but it also can take, in some cases, months).
Therefore, producing locally can be a way that fast fashion companies will win time. This strategy is used for part of the production of companies such as Zara, but there is a but: don’t expect prices to stay the same. If the company market is outside Asia, where fashion production is more affordable - initially due to cheaper workforce, but now also because of advanced technology and economy of scale - forget about 5 Euros tops. But honestly, do we still need such cheap clothes? Producing locally can develop the internal industry, create jobs, and reduce the environmental impact of transportation. It may be an option for fast fashion companies to have a more responsive production, even though it comes with a cost.
This possible change in the fashion calendar can also result in many other scenarios for fast fashion. Retailers could pressure suppliers to keep margins, or they could just accept lower margins and modify less their prices. These brands could also make collections even more based on trend forecasters, in order to avoid risks. Or maybe, in a more ideal world, they could slow down a bit and create more timeless pieces, like Uniqlo’s business model; but not sure about this one.
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We Don’t Even Know the Game Rules Yet
Since we don’t even know how much the fashion calendar will actually change, it’s difficult to say what will be the approach of fast fashion companies, but they are probably creating plans B, C, and D to every possibility. The industry is unstable in every sense it could be. At this moment, each small change affects companies very hard and no one really knows what to do.
The fashion calendar could even be divided into many, with each brand or niche of the industry following a different path. Fast fashion, as it is highly dependent on the trends from high fashion, will have to adapt to whatever comes to stay competitive. It is not clear yet how the fashion calendar will be after this pandemic, but the change started. Gucci is already going season-less, Alexander Wang left the fashion calendar years ago, and many other designers and brands are being very vocal about their dissatisfaction with the current calendar. My question to you is: As a customer, would you also like the fashion calendar to change? Because, in the end, the main goal of all these reflections is improving the experience of the most important player in the industry, the client.
Thank you for reading this week’s moderated and next Tuesday I will be back with more.
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