fashion

ShopStyle Meets The Complex Fashion Shopper

By Gertrude Aziz 3 days ago

The fashion category has arguably been the most complex amid the pandemic and subsequent shift to the digital-first economy. Business models have been flipped to emphasize eCommerce over physical stores. The consumer is buying more casual clothes than they were just six months ago. It’s enough to compel a retailer to make substantial changes as the holiday season heats up.

That’s exactly what ShopStyle has done. The Rakuten-owned fashion site has addressed the various complexities of the market and the uniqueness of its own business model by adding new brands, partners and entire product categories to meet shoppers where they live – online.

“Part of our 2020 strategy was to follow our mission statement, which is to embrace individuals’ style,” ShopStyle GM Alison Stiefel told PYMNTS. “And we’ve seen that people are evolving. It’s much more about celebrating that individuality. And to do

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China’s turbo-charged online fashion takes on Zara and H&M

By Gertrude Aziz 4 days ago

By Sonya Dowsett and Sophie Yu

MADRID/BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Shein may be the biggest shopping site you’ve never heard of.

The fast-fashion player is encroaching on the territory of more established rivals like Zara and H&M. It has become the largest, purely online, fashion company in the world measured by sales of self-branded products, according to Euromonitor.

Nanjing-based Shein, founded in 2008, is aiming squarely at the “Gen Z” social-media generation, using influencers on Instagram and TikTok, and discount codes, to attract younger shoppers in an increasingly crowded fashion market.

It offers low-cost styles, uploading hundreds of new designs to its app every week. The price for a dress is around half that of Zara, according to a recent Societe Generale price survey.

“You can save money, which is important when buying clothes as the fashions change so quickly,” said Rebeca Rondon, a 23-year-old student in Valencia, Spain, whose

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These Platforms Are Putting Latinx Fashion on the World Stage

By Gertrude Aziz 2 weeks ago

Latinx designers are making greater inroads into global fashion, and growing platforms are hoping to elevate these creatives and showcase the fresh perspectives and innovative designs many are bringing to the industry.

Here are four platforms working with Latinx designers to highlight their work, promote it and make it available for the world to witness and wear.

More from WWD

Latin American Fashion Summit

During her more than 20 years working in New York’s fashion industry, Estefania Lacayo, originally from Nicaragua, had seen many designers, entrepreneurs and writers from Latin America struggle to get noticed in the U.S. That’s why she cofounded the Latin American Fashion Summit three years ago “to empower our community of Latin Americans and also of Latinos living in the U.S. wanting to tap into this whole world of fashion.”

“They wouldn’t even know who to approach, how to go about it so they were constantly

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‘Fashion sales won’t return to normal until Christmas 2023’ say retail analysts

By Gertrude Aziz 3 weeks ago

Equally, brands that have been able to diversify into homeware and nightwear will do better over the months to come than those that make formal clothes.

“Clearly the more your business relies on bricks and mortar stores the worse the effect of a lockdown will be,” says Olivia von Halle, founder of the designer pyjama brand of the same name. “Different sectors within the industry will be affected differently – I expect ready-to-wear and accessories will suffer hugely whereas for loungewear, we expect to see a positive effect on sales.”

Justin Thornton, the co-founder of Preen agrees. “The immediate impact has been tough on fashion as the desire to shop has been somewhat replaced by home and the feeling of nesting,” he says. “Our Preen Home has been very successful during this period. We are now noticing this is slowly changing and there is a demand for more special fashion

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Giorgio Armani’s televised fashion show reinforces his super-brand power

By Gertrude Aziz 3 weeks ago

Refinery29

Here’s What It Takes For Fashion Brands To Be Sustainable. Can The Industry Be Saved?

It’s time to wake up. On Global Day of Climate Action, VICE Media Group is solely telling stories about our current climate crisis. Click here to meet young climate leaders from around the globe and learn how you can take action. By now, the fashion industry’s harmful effects on the environment are well-known. With natural resources being used faster than they can be renewed, and more clothing produced by brands (and thrown out by consumers) than ever before, the environmental impact of the industry, as it currently operates, is catastrophic. “In the U.S., 11 million tons of textiles go into landfills every year,” says Kristy Caylor, CEO and co-founder of For Days, a zero-waste, organic line of basics. “When these clothes decompose, they release methane which is more harmful than CO2.” With this in

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from digital games to the most intimate personal shoppers, how fashion has changed

By Gertrude Aziz 4 weeks ago

The world of fashion has pivoted to the new era
The world of fashion has pivoted to the new era

A year ago, your favourite designers knew you quite well. They could predict, generally, what events might be in your diary for the autumn season ahead, what types of Christmas and New Year parties you might be attending, and the winter vacations you probably had booked. They knew what you might want outfits for, how many pieces you could buy, when, where and what you might spend. 

But the coronavirus pandemic has altered all expectations and halted many of our most obvious plans. You might still be going on holiday, but the destination may have changed, warranting a different type of outfit. You might be heading to smaller gatherings and low-key dinners, rather than galas and mega weddings. The frequency of when you shop and how much you buy, as well as what you want to wear, will have most

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The Ins and Outs of Selling a Fashion or Luxury Business

By Gertrude Aziz 4 weeks ago

The global pandemic has not only generated what looks like a prolonged economic crisis, but also shifted people’s sentiment toward consumerism. How the fashion industry will be affected in the long term is a difficult question to answer.

Looking at the medium term, there is one topic that can be immediately discussed: In the current context, is it worth thinking about selling the business you built over the last few years or decades?

In short, the answer is “yes” if you believe you’ve reached the stage where the future of your firm is more likely to benefit from being part of a large group than if it were to remain independent. As you know, a large corporation can easily flex its muscle in such areas as advertising and media buying, customer data and analytics, commercial partnerships, online and brick-and-mortar retail, IT and technology, logistics and finance.

Today, large groups tend

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Is Slow Fashion the New Luxury?

By Gertrude Aziz 1 month ago

Fashion, like trouser silhouettes, tends to change course once the pendulum swings too far in one direction. And if fast fashion defined the 2010s, slow fashion may be the marker of the new decade.

For years, the industry has pushed mass production and consumption at a clip so rapid that quick-turn, quick-churn fashion is now falling out of favor and making way for its more measured counterpart. COVID-19 has helped accelerate this redefinition of fashion — both luxury and at other price points — as clothing crafted with sustainability at the fore.

“The pandemic has helped foster a ‘buy less, buy better’ mentality with interest sparking in products with more value and longevity over disposable fast fashion. There has been a greater push on artisan products and items with a focus on craftsmanship, further backing the slow-fashion trend,” said Kayla Marci, market analyst at retail intelligence platform Edited. Creating exclusivity

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TikTok to host its own month-long digital fashion event

By Gertrude Aziz 1 month ago

The social media platform TikTok has announced its own fashion month as a digital innovation aimed at rivaling the physical fashion weeks that take place around the world as well as to try to threaten Instagram’s supremacy over fashion content online.

The month-long event will begin on Friday and ends on 8 October and is set to feature a variety of hashtags and live videos. It will see a livestream of two fashion shows a week from labels such as Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent and Alice + Olivia. Meanwhile JW Anderson will debut their women’s spring/summer 21 collection on TikTok.

Related: The show must go on: fashion faces up to its Covid moment

Up until very recently fashion was an industry slow to adapt to the platform, which launched in China in 2016 and has since taken off explosively, especially with young people.

“I think [fashion labels] were unsure of

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