After the international fashion fairs in Florence and Amsterdam as well as the last Berlin Flagship Seek, last weekend we went back to Düsseldorf for the order round. With bright blue skies, the weather was once again keeping fashion retailers busy after a warm autumn for AW24. Fashion companies such as Bugatti, S.Oliver and Camel Active report on how clothing suppliers are reacting, what impact the attacks in the Suez Canal are having on the supply chain and what the overall mood was.
The footfall in the North Rhine-Westphalia state capital at the fashion rooms, but also the showrooms on Kaiserswerther Straße and Hall 29, was rather mixed from Friday to Sunday. The train drivers’ strike at Deutsche Bahn, which has now ended prematurely, is also said to have been partially to blame, as a result of which some traders – especially those who had to travel further afield – decided against coming to Düsseldorf.
However, the concerns among clothing suppliers were limited. According to Florian Wortmann, there were appointment cancellations at Bugatti, but the Herford-based clothing provider then found other solutions with its trading partners, according to the Chief Brand Officer. Other brand representatives, such as the Munich sales agency 4PM, which represents the Dutch brand Butcher of Blue at the Areal Böhler exhibition center at the Fashn Rooms, focused more on fixed appointments with regional customers instead of hoping for orders from unannounced trade fair visitors, explained Agency boss Patric Maly.
On Saturday afternoon, there wasn’t much going on at the start of the events in the “Alte Schmiede” hall, where the Fashn Rooms showroom concept and the sustainability-oriented Neonyt trade fair took place in a compressed space this time. Nevertheless, Neonyt, which took place in an adjacent hall for the first two editions after moving to Düsseldorf, provided a breath of fresh air for the exhibitors. They attracted visitors with various stand concepts. Under the motto “Boxing for Boxers”, the Dutch lingerie label A-Dam attracted attention with a boxing machine.
But there were also some new concepts among the exhibitors in the Fashion Rooms from the trade fair organizer Igedo. The Croatian XD Fashion Group was there with its new gender-fluid brand Ssyynn, which works with deadstock materials from the main brand Xenia Design and 3D scans.
Flexible outerwear
In outerwear, where sales were not particularly strong due to the warm autumn, clothing suppliers are also relying on new approaches that are suitable for different weather conditions, but also for indoors and outdoors. It’s about bringing the outdoor area indoors, says Wortmann, who at Bugatti is thinking of items such as light blousons in addition to the nylon puffer jacket with embroidery. It is important that the products are more universally applicable and can be easily combined depending on the weather. For some suppliers such as Camel Active and Digel Move, the menswear specialist’s younger line, the overshirt continues to be a theme in the collection.
“We have massively expanded the topic of lighter jackets and overshirts when developing the collection,” explains Volker Weschenfelder, Managing Director at Camel Active. The outdoor specialist is increasingly focusing on ready-to-wear and is dedicating its own pop-up to it, which is open to retailers and end consumers on Saturday and Monday in addition to its own showroom.
Nevertheless, the topic of jackets is of course not completely off the table, especially for the colder winter. So it took a while in the last FW season, but it was sold well – also driven by sales, according to Bugatti managing director Julius Brinkmann. Dominik Peryl, Country Manager for Germany and Austria at Woodbird, sees it similarly. Thick jackets are indispensable, especially in the streetwear sector, where the Danish brand is active. At the Rottendorf-based clothing supplier S.Oliver, black wool coats were particularly in demand in the FW24 menswear order.
When it comes to trousers, the denim section did particularly well for men and women. “Jeans were a plank,” summarizes Peryl. The jeans also impressed the Mönchengladbach-based womenswear brand Gitta Banko, run by the influencer of the same name. The “Rylee” jeans model is Banko’s bestseller in this area.
The knitting sector is also doing well, confirms Kai Jördens, who represents brands such as Luis Trenker with his Munich agency of the same name. The Norwegian knit seemed particularly popular this season – as was already seen on the menswear catwalks in Paris and Milan – and was a must-have in many menswear and womenswear collections and in the showrooms of Bugatti and Camel Active and also Bogner could be seen. The Munich brand, in whose brand DNA the ski sector plays a major role, has also printed the Norwegian pattern on a sweater this season in addition to the traditional knitwear.
Further delays in the supply chain
While clothing suppliers tried to maintain price levels this season despite continued rising costs and significant adjustments last year, the supply chain issue was already a concern for some companies at the beginning of the year.
After the issue had just calmed down somewhat in 2023, the Houthi attacks on cargo ships in the Suez Canal are now causing the next delays. The S.Oliver Group, which, in addition to the brand of the same name, also includes Comma, is affected. There is a delay of at least two weeks in the current spring-summer delivery, says product manager Sonja Balodis. Similar delays are also occurring with Camel Active, although only around 10 to 20 percent of the first delivery date is affected.