Early Sunday morning, there is a relaxed atmosphere at the entrance to the Modefabriek trade fair. Most visitors are happy to come into the heated hall from the cold winter morning. Hundreds of colorful ribbons hang from the ceiling of Amsterdam’s RAI exhibition center, reaching down to the concrete floor of the hall. Once the admission ticket is scanned, guests will receive a blank color ticket. You can design these yourself with the pieces of ribbons that the Modefabriek employees cut off if you wish.
This issue of Modefabriek has as many pages as there are as many colors as can be seen here. In total, more than four hundred women’s and men’s fashion brands can be found at the fair on this day. There is a separate area with more sustainable brands, a platform for young fashion designers and a fashion gallery with higher-priced brands. Lectures and workshops will also continue to take place at the fair. This makes the fair a good indicator for the coming fashion season: What is going on in the minds of brands and retailers and what do the new and collections bring with them?
Cooperation as the key to success
The versatility of Modefabriek already characterized the last edition and goes hand in hand with the approach of director Caroline Krouwels, who has been in charge of the fair since 2020. “I think collaboration is normal,” she says. “We can do a lot, but some things someone else can do better.” When children’s fashion platform Drive Inn Junior suggested setting up a segment at the fair last fall, Krouwels was thrilled. “I was always a bit sad about the end of Market by Kleine Fabriek in 2017,” said Krouwels in an interview on Sunday, “so I’m glad that children’s fashion is back.”
Not all elements of the fair are new. Children’s fashion has always been part of Modefabriek, and the fair has supported young designers in various ways since its inception in 1996. But the fair is like a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces of which have a different shape every year.
The trade fair has not grown significantly. There are about 450 brands at Modefabriek, including about 100 debutants. That’s a little more than last summer’s edition, but less than before the Corona crisis. The large hall at the back of the site is still closed. When it comes to brands, Krouwels is a bit picky, she says. She tries to find a good balance between the space available, the number and level of exhibiting brands and the atmosphere at the fair. “I don’t need to grow for the sake of growing,” she says.
It is also striking that Modefabriek is increasingly curating the various offers itself this year. Last year, the platforms for young entrepreneurs and sustainable fashion were still organized by external parties, this time Modefabriek took over the areas on its own. “We are still working with these partners, but we have become more involved,” says Krouwels. “Selling a booth is really a job. We know how to do it and we find that we can do it on our own. And then it’s convenient to take care of it ourselves, both for us and for the brands.”
Particular attention to the craft
While in June the platform for young entrepreneurs could still be found outside in the summer sun, this time it was given a place in the middle of the central hall. Works on display included works by Ruben Jurriën – winner of the Lichting Fashion Prize organized by HTNK Fashion Recruitment & Consultancy and Amsterdam Fashion Week – who presented his first ready-to-wear collection there. House of Useless, a label for handmade clothing and accessories, and children’s fashion brand Petit Ganache were also represented.
The more sustainable fashion section is also slightly different from last year. It’s a bit more spacious and no longer has an open platform at its center, but the Café Wild & The Moon. Vegan snacks are sold there. All around there are labels like Kings of Indigo, Lanius and Thinking Mu, but also the made-to-measure brand Atalyé has its own stand. On the other side is the fashion designer Tess van Zalinge. At the Modefabriek she shows her couture and bag collections, among other things. She makes the latter from leftover fabrics. She sells them to retailers in limited editions. But she’s here first and foremost to raise awareness of the fashion craft, she says, as she uses tiny stitches to sew beaded flowers onto a quilted pendant in place.
For Krouwels, handicrafts were an important topic at the fair. “Tailoring is one of my personal passions, but above all it is the basis of the clothes, the origin of our work. It stands for making, transforming and reusing. She is part of today. Handicraft is trendy: get creative yourself and have fun working with materials. I think that will also be the case in the years to come.
The ‘Sustainable Stop’, as the sustainable area is known, is proving to be a magnet for several retailers, such as Sam and Sander Visser, the owners of Haarlem fashion store Tiesjurt. This is your first time at Modefabriek, but your shop has only been around for a year. It is the range of more sustainable brands that attracted them. They went straight from the entrance to the ‘Sustainable Stop’ and skipped the rest. Michelle van Laatum and Tran Munnik from agency MVL, who represent the Laurie brand at Modefabriek, confirm that several retailers come specifically for the Sustainable Stop. “We like the fact that we belong to them,” they said.
Hetty and Rosa Scholtens from Pakhuis Fashion in Hattem, the Netherlands, also came mainly because of the more sustainable brands. They welcome the Sustainable Stop but feel that the other parties at the show could do a lot more on sustainability. “I think mainstream brands definitely don’t have enough ambition when it comes to sustainability,” says Rosa Scholtens. “And retailers don’t ask enough critical questions either. To be honest, I’m quite shocked. After all the sustainable ones Promises made during the Corona period, I would not have expected that Modefabriek would still look like this in 2023.”
Increase in costs for brands and retailers
Another topic among attendees is inflation, both for brands and retailers. Menswear label Bluefields has been bargaining hard to hold the brand’s prices, says Kim Verlooy. He is the Senior Account Manager of State of Art, Bluefields’ parent company. “The buying behavior of customers who buy in the upper price segment anyway does not change that much. But customers who buy products under 80 euros switch as soon as the prices change. So we have to keep our prices constant without sacrificing quality.”
Inflation does not play a major role for every company. At the Dutch brand Another Label, prices have risen slightly, says Tanith van Kammen from the Motel agency. The production costs of some products have increased, but these increases have been spread across the brand.
Whether prices rise also depends on whether a brand produces largely in-house and thus has costs under control. That’s the case with Daniele Fiesoli, says Canip Simsek, owner of agency Studio C Company, which represents the brand in the Netherlands. Prices for other brands in his portfolio have risen by up to 10 percent, according to Simsek. Prices have also risen at the Danish fashion label Laurie. It couldn’t be otherwise, says Van Laatum from the MVL agency. “If the prices don’t go up, someone else in the chain will be compromised. Of course it’s not pretty, but it’s easy to explain.”
Retailers, in turn, are quick to squeeze their own profit margins. Two buyers from a Dutch discounter who were present at the fair said that the company had definitely “give up margin” in the ordering season. Tamara and Michael Carpet of Berlin retail chain Tatem initially tried not to raise prices but will have to do so soon, they say. They also choose not to compromise on quality, but above all to buy less. Hetty and Rosa Scholtens say the same. “Rather less and better.”
Calm down again
The fashion factory itself has also suffered from inflation, says Krouwels. How strong, however, she will only find out afterwards. “Of course we calculated an estimate in advance, but that was a few months ago, before inflation really got going. We can only make the final calculation after the fair when the RAI costs are available. It’s going to be exciting, but we’ve got it under control.”
The prices at the stalls are slightly higher than in the summer, she says. “On the other hand, these prices were also much lower than before Covid-19. We’re also in the process of getting a little down to earth. Of course, one cannot make such an increase every year; you have to deal with it sensibly and calmly. Inflation is a problem for many companies. What I’m saying is that as a company, you can’t blame everything on your customers, we have to share a little with them.”
In the meantime, Krouwels is already thinking about the next edition of the fair. “Which segments need more attention, which ones do we want to expand, and what are we still missing?” There is no doubt that she would like to continue working with as many different parties as possible. “My experience in my professional career is that , when you work together and it fits, new things emerge and then it can become something long-term.”
This translated post previously appeared on FashionUnited.nl.