FASHION AFTER FASHION
Text by Masoud Golsorkhi
The fashion industry is far from being unique among the global industries to have felt the deep impact of Covid-19. While for some the trauma has been a temporary – albeit expensive – glitch, and for others, like Amazon, a temporary bonanza, for the fashion industry, Covid-19 will be transformative and permanent.
Speak to industry figures and there is an almost unanimous confirmation of data from sources as diverse as the Financial Times, WWD and Business of Fashion that the industry as a whole is experiencing massive contraction with revenue down somewhere between 30% and 40%. What’s more, the existential challenge Covid poses to fashion is vastly accelerating the transformations that were already underway. That the fashion industry was challenged even before the pandemic is perhaps most obviously illustrated by the many people who told me what a welcome relief it was to finally step back from the frenzy and endless cycle of shows and collections. Many in the industry have relished the opportunity to take time off and look at horizons beyond fashion, to study changing consumer behaviour and expectations, and the effects of new technologies. On the other hand, that break has left us swimming in an ocean of unwanted clothes produced in advance of the two seasons that were wiped out by lockdown: it has been reported that half the clothes made in the second half of 2019 will never be worn. That is terrible news for the planet. But that waste and overproduction was a reality prior to the global pandemic, even if the system had begun to change: the sustainability of supply chains had already begun to become more than simply an awkward subject for journalists to put to brands at their press conferences. While it’s easy to be totally cynical about the process and perhaps harder to see the virtuous captains of industry as fully converted environmentalists, the truth is, as Homer Simpson once wisely put it, “a little from column A and a little from column B”.
Regardless of their motives there have been undoubtedly positive signs that fashion was about to be a pioneer in a kinder, greener and more socially responsible version of itself, thanks in part to the Black Lives Matter movement, which has added to the sense of urgency for the industry to put its house in order. Environmental and racial justice are boxes that have been ticked, be it reluctantly, wholeheartedly or demonstratively. Management consultancy McKinsey, which every year produces reports about the fashion industry, structured its State of Fashion 2019 around buzzwords like “getting woke”, radical transparency”, and “sustainability first” – all hot topics, until Covid-19 changed the paradigm.
State of Fashion 2020 already had a sombre mood to it when it was published late last year. That turned from bleak to positively panicky by the time McKinsey produced a pandemic update in April. Full of dire warnings like, “we expect a large number of global fashion companies to go bankrupt in the next 12 to 18 months”, the report is also, like any snake-oil salesman in history who never let a good crisis go to waste, full of clichés like “Black Swan Event” – borrowed from the popular book by Naseem Nicholas Taleb about how a single isolated event can turn everything on its head – and “Expect the Unexpected”. It’s hard to know what to do with this kind of consultant-speak wrapped up as information, regardless of how visually appealing the presentation. Perhaps the easiest way would be to use the famous Monty Python sketch: “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”
Of course, the fashion industry never expected Covid and was not alone in that. Suits, shirts and ties will remain the unsold necessities of an old life, now surplus to requirement given we work from home, not the office. We no longer need party dresses as there are no clubs, nor bikinis or Hawaiian shirts as we can’t travel to Bournemouth, let alone Hawaii. After the Italian government like many others was contemplating a second lockdown in late October, rioters in Milan, Rome and Turin ran through the streets targeting luxury fashion shops in particular for looting. Why might fashion be the target of the general rage towards the authorities in a country that is a fashion capital and whose GDP is dependent on the fashion industry more than any other in the world? The answer might lie in the way the industry is perceived rather than the fact that we need fewer suits.
Some fashion leaders are simply choosing to look away from the trouble in the fashion industry’s traditional European markets and pin their hopes on a fast-reviving Chinese market. There is certainly a tried and tested fashion formula that will continue to render profits in China, especially with the opening of third- and fourth-tier cities. The questions asked of the industry are complex, even if the fashion industry is really just an innocent bystander caught in the cogs of history and in the crossfire between citizen rage and state impotence. Yet even without a full analysis of a huge and complex question, it’s possible to offer an answer. Whatever the reason for the current condition, to thrive fashion needs to cross the barricade and remake itself anew, not just to avoid short-term flak but to avoid extinction.
Joanna Gunn, until recently creative director of Lane Crawford, which also includes the Joyce Group, is based in Hong Kong, which gives her a particularly interesting vantage point. From there she is still part of a well-developed market, but is able to peek over the wall at the fashion industry’s Xanadu: mainland China. Gunn, who was recently appointed as chief brand officer at Rosewood Hotel Group, says that she has started having issues with the very word fashion. “Fashion is such an unfashionable word,” she says. “I joined the industry because it contained the most interesting and creative people.” Relying on the hope of a bailout paid for by Chinese consumers might mean abandoning creativity and innovation to hard-headed business. The Chinese market is developing in its own pathways, some of which are simply not open to being simply taken. Gunn observes that while the Chinese mainland customers’ tastes are often more trend led, keeping them interested may prove harder to do for any large brand with big logos that might currently be riding high. “Customer loyalty is very different in mainland China and interest in a brand tends to be short term,” she says. “It can change suddenly. Western marketeers have heard of a handful of Chinese platforms, but in reality many more are popping up all the time.” As a result, she observes: “It’s much harder to map a customer journey from a brand perspective and plan around it. This consumer behaviour is a result of the way life is lived online there; it’s all about convenience and speed of access.” With the new pandemic-blighted realities, the whole industry may just need to find new definitions for its business all over the world, not simply in China. Growth needs to be measured differently, just like loyalty and creativity. Fashion needs new yardsticks.
Mytheresa.com is one of the online retailers that has shown resilience in the face of the pandemic. Once the coolest boutique in Munich, it launched as an online business and quickly became not only a global tastemaker but, according to Business of Fashion, the one e-commerce luxury player that has consistently made money since going digital. I asked its president Michael Kliger how they intended to position their offer against the storm of Covid-19: “We need even more clarity in what we do and what we communicate. As a retailer the aspiration needs to be more than just having a lot of products on the site. Consumers want an opinion and a clear view. We do not simply want to give consumers what they want, but define what they want. So our campaigns try to be even more focused and articulate on our view of luxury wardrobe building.”
Likewise Holli Rogers of Farfetch, which has also shown the resilience of retailers who had their digital houses in order before the onslaught of the global pandemic. “In a world where we can’t physically be together at the moment,” she says, “where we can’t travel to our favourite boutiques or shopping destinations, we wanted to express how we can bring the world of fashion to people everywhere now and in the future.” If anything, the pandemic has been a vindication for Farfetch: “Our business model and strategies have shown themselves to be truly resilient during this time. Our augmented retail initiatives, which we have been developing for the past three years through our exclusive technology partnership with Chanel, is a great example. The retail initiative is expected to be even more critical for brick-and-mortar, as leading brands are seeking to optimise sales per square foot post Covid-19.”
Tomaso Galli is a much respected industry consultant whose professional life has offered him a ringside view at the greatest luxury brands, from Gucci to Prada and Zegna. He is currently working with the rapidly growing Thom Browne, one of the few companies that, over the past three years, has managed to defy industry trends and show double-digit growth. While he agrees about the scale of the general downturn, he observes that the pattern of growth and decline resemble a “leopard skin” with hotspots bucking the trend by actually growing in volume, set against a background of general contraction. (Thom Browne is one such hotspot.) Galli thinks that the fashion industry’s overall losses will be reversed sometime by 2021 or 2022, but warns that the recovery will not be uniform either. “There is no reason that some of the brands that were thriving in 2019 will be around by 2025,” he says.
What will be the deciding factor in this accelerated process of evolution? Everyone seems to agree that a starting point is having a brand proposition with a strong point of view, creating a certain validity among consumers through messages that include products seen as good value. Also helpful is a solid service ethos capable of being pitched according to different audiences’ needs.
“If anything, we believe that the new reality means focusing even more than before on what really matters, so that we continue to be seen as the most relevant source of fashion authority by our customers,” says Kliger. “That means a strongly curated offer from the best brands, highly relevant and inspirational content, as well as superior customer service. We need even more clarity in what we do and what we communicate. We need to trim down the unnecessary clutter. That does not translate simply into ‘less is more’, but that personal relevance is more.”
Considering the belt tightening that will inevitably follow the pandemic, will brands continue to hire highly regarded and ever better-paid creative directors, in the game of brand musical chairs that had become such a cornerstone of fashion news? Those I spoke to agree that the need for creative vision in positions of leadership in the industry was more important than ever if fashion is to recapture the popular imagination. But perhaps not the same kind of creative director. The new version needs to have a strong vision, but be less blinkered in their world view, less self-absorbed and more open to cultural and artistic influences. What about those who are about to step out into the industry or who have been trading for a few seasons nurturing sapling businesses? The good news is that both Galli and Gunn rate their chances better than those of the large-scale established businesses.
As Gunn observes, a new more personal brand of fashion might be created by a new breed of designers more akin to multitasking creatives. “If you talk to a lot of designers in China they rarely say they are just one thing,” she says. “They are designers who are also artists and photographers, who also do X, Y or Z. While that has its own problems, what is also very exciting about it is that there are no set ways of doing things. These guys totally ignore the concept of seasons and cycles of the established order; their collections are ready when they are ready.”
It’s a free-wheeling attitude that “frees them from the existing systems and the constraints and allows them to work on crafting their offer to boost a creative vision”. For Gunn, the reason to exist “must come before the offer of a vision and that reason must be about the impact upon the world and leaving it a better place than we found”. Galli agrees; he believes that there is every chance of a new vision emerging from some as-yet-unknown individual, perhaps someone already plotting the creation of the new colette in London or Chicago. The exciting thing is that we can’t know that right now. Once again, fashion is dead, long live fashion. ◉