The signals we’ve been getting over the last two years about the acceleration and deceleration of fashion consumption have been extremely contradictory: on the one hand, people in lockdown 2020 cleaned out all their closets and decided to buy less in the future. On the other hand, retail sales in the last two years were significantly higher than in 2019, despite the shops being closed in the meantime. This means that although people talked a lot about cutting back on consumption, the bottom line was that they bought significantly more.
Unfortunately, the clothing industry did not participate in this additional consumption. Both interest in clothing and consumption of clothing were down 30% in 2020 compared to the previous year. But as soon as there was a noticeable easing anywhere in the world, there was excess of catch-up and revenge buying.
As contradictory and confusing as all these phenomena are, they make one thing absolutely clear: during the pandemic – and probably even through the pandemic – the debate about more sustainable fashion has entered a new phase that is fundamentally different from the previous one . So far, the focus has been on more sustainable product quality. The companies replaced cotton with organic cotton, virgin polyester with synthetic fibers made from recycled PET bottles, and leather with vegan alternatives. And consumers just bought the same thing in green. Companies like Armedangels, Ecoalf and Veja have benefited enormously from this booming green consumption. But such strategies will not carry fashion manufacturers through the second wave of the sustainability debate.
The analysts from DMI, Carl Tillessen and Niels Holger, will present what this means in concrete terms for fashion in a TREND PRESENTATION as part of MUNICH FABRIC START on Wednesday, August 31, from 4:00 p.m.
Under the FIRMA label, Carl Tillessen not only developed collections for 17 years that won numerous prizes, but also six of his own shops, an online shop and a cosmetics line. As a graduate in business administration and entrepreneur, he always keeps an eye on the numbers in his analyses. His non-fiction book KONSUM is a bestseller.
Niels Holger Wien studied fashion at the Royal Academy in Antwerp and learned the trade of trends from Li Edelkoort. Today he is chairman of Intercolor, i.e. the global network of trend institutions that sets color trends. So it would be an understatement to say that Niels Holger Wien is a color guru. He is the color guru worldwide.