Fashion is an everyday topic for everyone. Most people usually spend some time thinking about what to wear, but not everyone thinks about how to wear it. From closing zippers to buttoning our shirts, there are many aspects that don’t seem like a bother to most. But for people with disabilities, it’s a whole other story. Once defined by exclusivity, fashion has started to develop as a more all-accepting sector in the past years. Although it has started catering to a broader variety of body types, incomes, and cultural backgrounds, clothing made for people with disabilities, called “the adaptive wear industry”, is still lagging behind. Increasing ranges for disability would…
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Millennials giving the fashion industry a kick of sustainability
There’s a movement going on. A movement within the fashion industry where people have collectively chosen to take a stand against big fast fashion brands and ask the million dollar question: Who made my clothes? In August 2014, a garment factory in Rana Plaza collapsed, killing more than 1,134garment workers. Workers who had families, friends, children, partners. So this is a revolution synonymous not only with protecting the environment but also the people behind our 3$ garments. “The True Cost” is a documentary that can be found on Netflix, and the first thing anyone involved in the slow-fashion movement will recommend to the “newcomers”. Not only is the documentary very…
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What is a fashion film?
“It’s something like a pear with a pink propeller, that flies around and smells like summer“. This is how Philipp Ulita from the Berlin Fashion Film Festival describes the genre of fashion film. Indeed, fashion film echoes complexity: a kaleidoscope of tangible and intangible socio-cultural elements that fashion creates and sustains. Petra Collins x Gucci Fashion film is a vehicle of emotion which activates storytelling. In a fast-paced, digitalised world the spread and reach of information is so great and attention seeking that fashion brands use different technological and artistic innovations to express their brand identity, create content and target consumers. They are short films which are adapted to our…
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On how Instagram is revolutionising our fashion experience
You probably have mixed feelings about Instagram; the little pink icon is something you cherish dearly but also makes you feel slightly guilty of over-soliciting daily? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. As of the end of 2017, Instagram officially counts 800 million monthly users, ranking it the 7th most widely used social media platform and making it the 5th most downloaded application on the Apple Store in that same year. The cosmetics industry dominates, included in 23% of all posts, but it is closely followed by the fashion industry. Ask anyone remotely interested in fashion today if they’ve resorted to the application for outfit ideas or brand discoveries and I…
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Mass Customisation in Fashion
Everybody has their own tastes and preferences, and the world we live in constantly caters to that. Most things we consume are the product of some kind of customisation, from the salad dressing we choose to put on our lunch to the phone case that protects our mobile devices. Therefore it has become norm for companies to tailor their products to fit in with this growing customisation demand and offer individual products. But for there to be customisation in mass production industries, a new approach is needed. Thus, the concept of mass-customisation is born. Joseph Pine defines mass customisation as the mass production of individually customised goods and services. Seems…
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A Game of Thrones on the Chinese Luxury Market
Who are the stakeholders in the Chinese luxury market, and what have they set their sights on? July 1st, the Galeries Lafayette, Paris: the summer sale is in full swing. Throngs of shoppers struggle to move around the stores as they wish, let alone retain their personal space. The individual morphs into the crowd, which in turn resembles a human river. These people have a lot in common, from their intrinsic desire to score a bargain, to their love of designer goods. However, they also share one more undeniable connection – a Chinese nationality. Chinese shoppers made up 30% of global luxury sales in 2016, according to Bain & Company’s…
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Zeitgeist in Fashion
The Milan Fashion Week has just passed. Runways have been the stage for so many new fashion trends. With every season bringing in something new trends to the fashion industry one cannot help but wonder: Where do these trends come from? As any fashion lover knows, fashion is not only about brand labels and dressing up pretty; fashion is a reflection of global flows around us including cultural, technological, political happenings. The industry tries to reflect these on the runways. This is what “zeitgeist” is; this word literally means the spirit of time. Trends are all about capturing zeitgeist. Courtesy of The Cut A fashion show today reflects the issues…
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Vintage: what goes around comes around
From Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, to ‘rocknrolla’ Bianca Jagger and it-girl Jane Birkin one word comes to mind: VINTAGE. Vintage fashion has always been a point of inspiration, a source of reinvention for the fashion industry. Divided into decades or eras, vintage is always recurrent through some timeless and revolutionary big trends. Surprisingly (or not), in the universe of fast-fashion, the vintage luxury fashion market is booming. The reason? Firstly, the prices of new products have gone up by at least 15% creating a drive to buy vintage. Secondly, vintage is outside the fashion cycle, it represents a personal, unique and bold statement against modern day artificial consumerism.…
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Shoes, strategy and sales. Why Michael Kors bought Jimmy Choo.
Jimmy Choo has a new owner. Michael Kors has agreed to purchase the luxury shoe brand for approximately $1.2 billion, adding an established global brand to the U.S. retailer’s stable as its own handbag and accessories sales suffer. Many retailers, not only Michael Kors, have faced decreasing sales in the last couple of years because of high competition from online shopping, discount as well as fast fashion stores like H&M and Zara. In an attempt to convince new costumers to shop, Michael Kors has heavily discounted their products, which lastly lead more people to wait for the sale season in order to avoid paying the full price and diminishing the…
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Replay: Re-playing with the Jeans Concept
Report from the company visit of BS4F team to Replay Headquarters, Asolo that was held on November 27th On 27th of November, the BS4F team routed to Asolo, where the Replay Headquarters are located. When we arrived, we were shocked by the architecture; it felt like we were somewhere in America! The American vibes continued also inside. The Replay team gave us an extremely warm welcome; not figuratively, they were nice enough to give us a fresh breakfast. Our company visit started with a brief history; Claudio Buziol founded the remarkable apparel company in 1981. It is a “complete company” in the sense of a worldwide coverage and multiple categories…
