Fashion Consort News Bytes

Fashion brands spend a lot of time, money and resources in protecting their brand, especially in the luxury sector. The goal is to build a clear and concise brand identity, which allows companies to sell their products at higher prices and with bigger profit margins. Essentially, customers are willing to pay more for luxury products—and the marketing that goes with it--because they represent something more than the product itself. It’s no surprise then, that brands are very meticulous in who they affiliate with, whether it’s the retailer they partner with, or the celebrity they engage for their ad campaigns. The goal is to align with like-minded businesses and people to further reinforce brand values. This model has shifted dramatically since the 80s and 90s, as fast fashion brands began to knock-off luxury brands, eating into their profits and brand positions. In an effort to control the situation, luxury brands began to collaborate with retailers such as H&M and Target, bringing in a new era of collaboration between diametrically opposed partners. This trend precipitated as streetwear emerged as the defining trend of the decade, forcing luxury brands to get even more creative in their affiliations—from hiring VIrgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton to partnerships with brands like Supreme. Today, a new model is emerging. Jean Paul Gaultier just announced that his couture house would continue, but would feature new designers each season, providing the Gaultier house with constant aesthetic change. While other brands have played around with this concept, Gaultier is the first to adopt this as an overall business model. This dramatic shift has the potential to further disrupt the luxury market as we know it, infusing it with fresh talent and ideas.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fashion retailers continue to experience major disruptions in their business. Not only is the retail marketplace over-saturated and highly competitive, consumer preferences are changing, largely driven by online access and innovative technologies. Key considerations for operating a successful retail business, in today’s market, are: Only 10-20% of sales are completed online, but close to 65% of in-person sales are influenced by digital channels. Retailers must have a comprehensive, coordinated omni-channel strategy that takes advantage of each channel’s strengths. Consumers expect that brand’s offer a full lifestyle experience across all channels. This branded experience needs to be authentic to a brand’s core values, with the goal of encouraging an engaged community. Retailers must be highly focused in their product and service offering. Customers highly value ease of shopping, which includes smaller store footprints, “hidden technologies” that facilitate the shopping experience and pay attention to an overall customer user experience—how they move through a store, online and onsite. Retailers must recognize that consumers expect more one-on-one engagement that takes into consideration more diverse consumer needs and wants. Key opportunities include being more actively involved in engaging customers authentically around race, language, sizing, politics, and sustainable practices. And more and more, consumers are demanding spaces and experiences that aren’t based on a gender binary (ie. women’s and men’s departments). It’s impossible for retail brands to be perfect, but customers expect retailers to try their best, apologize for missteps, and be transparent along the way.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With the birth of haute couture in the late 1800s, Paris quickly became the epicenter of fashion creativity, setting the standard for style throughout the world. This coalesced with a burgeoning nouveau riche class and the introduction of new forms of transportation that connected the world. Designers such as Paul Poiret set their sites on creating more than just clothing, offering products such as perfumes and home furnishings to support his client’s modern lifestyle. It was the birth of lifestyle branding, and it hits jet speed in the 1920s. Subsequent fashion houses, became adept at curating and telling their brand story, mixing fact and fiction to add to their label’s mystique and create an overall DNA. The tight control of the brand narrative ensured exclusivity as these brands began to spread throughout the world. Fast forward to today, the very myths that ensure these brands still exist, is now a potential liability. Customers now have access to the internet, where controlling brand narrative is much more difficult. And information is much easier to get online, leading customers to find new information that runs counter to a brand’s purported history. Customers are demanding transparency, and prefer authenticity to a “pitch perfect” story. This is forcing luxury brands into a corner. Is it good business to be more forthcoming around their history? For example, does being truthful about Chanel’s role in World War II and subsequent banishment from France, potentially hurt or help the brand in the 21st century? How does that counterbalance with the Dior/Galliano fiasco, if at all? What seems to be clear is that if brands are still struggling to determine how best to grapple with their complex histories more truthfully, is it any wonder that these brands will also continue to struggle with current issues around diversity, cultural appropriation, production processes and more? Perhaps a reckoning with the past is what’s needed to best approach the future. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In light of the recent “black face” fashion show controversy involving the MFA fashion design program at the Fashion Institute of Technology, it’s important to highlight three things: 1)    The Asian population, specifically Chinese students, represent a large part of enrollment at FIT and other fashion universities…sometimes over 50% of a program cohort. 2)    These programs rarely include American cultural and historical training as part of their curriculum, let alone a comprehensive education in understanding cultures beyond the U.S. 3)    American educators are not well trained to understand the needs of a more diverse student body. And yet, increasingly upon graduation, fashion students are likely to work as part of a global fashion system, where they are required to understand the needs of customers on a vast, international scale. It’s an almost impossible task, but if the many corporate mishaps are any sign—from Prada to Burberry, it’s a reality of training future fashion leaders. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There is a lot of excitement and buzz surrounding the news that Raf Simons will join Italian luxury brand Prada as an equal co-creator with Miuccia Prada. The talented Belgian designer has moved from one creative director position to another over the past several years, including Jil Sander, Dior and most recently Calvin Klein. The big question on the tip of everyone’s tongue…will it work? Tom Ford’s turn as the Creative Director at Gucci for ten years from 1994 to 2004, is largely credited with the introduction of the fashion designer as uber creative director. This role was now responsible for more than just designing six collections a year, but for creating marketing campaigns, store designs, and on top of that curating their own image and fame. This complete control worked so well for Gucci, that other brands followed suit. While there have been some examples of success employing this autocratic model, the end result was mostly designer burnout. It was proving an impossible task to do everything…something that Simons understands all too well. So…the announcement this week is especially interesting because the creative duties will be shared. And perhaps these two singular artists will be afforded the real luxury of more time to create ideas, share ideas, and find new inspiration in a fashion system that is ever more demanding and mass driven. Time will tell.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For the last several years, China has emerged as a great exporter of students to the U.S. Nowhere is this more evident than at fashion schools, where Chinese students often make up 50% of a student cohort. Luckily, most Chinese students arrived in the U.S. for the spring semester before travel sanctions were put in place, due to the coronavirus, but are now facing uncertainty about their ability to return home. For seniors, this is especially acute, as families cannot plan to attend graduation ceremonies, typically held in May. Additionally, many fashion schools offer spring learning sessions and study abroad opportunities in China during the spring. These have all been cancelled, leaving students and schools in a lurch. For American students, studying in China is a chance to see the heart of the manufacturing industry firsthand. Finally, there has been an uptick in violence against Chinese students that school administrators must grapple with. Recently, a student at The New School was hit over the head at a local restaurant in New York City. The assailant shouted an epitaph about the coronavirus and China. While these attacks are largely due to fear and misinformation, the coronavirus can add another level of stress on Chinese students studying in the US.  UPDATE: Universities are now largely closed in the US, including The New School. Most students have returned home. Classes will be finished online and plans are underway for summer and fall terms.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

More and more, fashion retailers are grappling with the concept of diversity and inclusion, especially in an increasingly transparent world. Largely due to social media, customers are more vocal than ever about their expectations and needs. And because there are so many options to choose from—especially online—customers increasingly prefer to spend their money on a brand that shares their personal values. They won’t hesitate to leave a retailer they’ve spent their life shopping at, if they don’t feel heard. At the forefront of this shift are conversations about standardized sizes that all but dismiss a large part of the US population and are still firmly rooted in the gender binary. Companies that fail to offer services in more than English are simply not able to communicate effectively to a large swath of their customer base who speak Spanish and other languages. And brands that assume their customer is largely white, are increasingly missing out on offering products that customers are in need of from bras to make-up. Brands like “Victoria’s Secret” have experienced major push-back for their lack of diversity, ultimately leading to the cancellation of their annual fashion show, major organizational reshuffling, and then most recently to a private buy-out. By not paying attention or tackling issues of diversity and inclusion head-on, the future of that brand is now in the balance.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are more signs of retail disruption in 2020 as evidenced by the recent layoffs at Macy’s. Clearly, retail executives continue to struggle to find the best way to meet the needs of Millennial and Gen Z customers. It’s no surprise then that a mantra for retailers has emerged from this chaos…EXPERIENCE, EXPERIENCE, EXPERIENCE. And brands have begun to do just that, investing millions of dollars in creating all sorts of experiences from live DJs to arctic dressing rooms to try on winter coats. And yet many of these experiences are not paying off. Why? Sure, a unique experience can get the attention of the press and draw traffic, but the return on investment in such a saturated marketplace is typically short lived. What customers are really searching for is an authentic community and ease of shopping. When these two elements are combined consistently, and within a branded context, retailers begin to understand that experience is not about being flashy and doing something unique, but about being authentic to their customer’s needs. Building loyalty, after all, still takes hard work and time. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices