admits that, as someone who cares about fashion, he sometimes feels guilty about replicating the work of popular, trendsetting brands, but doesn’t get too bent out of shape. “It’s the apparel business, so if you want to be successful, especially if you have a fast-fashion brand, you’re definitely producing overseas.” M. He knows he wouldn’t be able to keep costs so low if everything was sourced and manufactured in LA. He takes pride in the quality of his products because he’s done his due diligence in what he’s sourcing and who he works with. So we must re-interpret what’s trendy-which is in the fashion world most of the time un-wearable-and make it wearable.” It’s risky for a brand like us to release something that will be trendy before any high fashion brand releases it. “We don’t have the same market power Vetements, Gosha or Off-White has. "In the ready-to-wear industry and fast-fashion, everything has been invented, you cannot create something really revolutionary," says Erwan Ferriere, the brand's communications manager. “With blogs and influencers, that product elevation allows to be pushed hard to the masses, which in turn makes it a trend.” Parisian brand Nid de Guepes, too, points to a vague idea of “youth culture” as their inspiration, but they also have a pragmatic-veering-toward-cynical approach to the industry. “We’re always keeping an eye on what’s going on in other industries as well-music, visual art, design-to make sure we’re developing upon other relevant areas to incorporate into our line,” says George. Like their customers, Represent pays close attention to social media.
Rather than revolutionize by inventing the next big trend, they've gotten ahead by hopping on current trends quicker than anyone else. “It sucks up everything in its path, feeding off other designers, destroying the environment we live in with absolutely no remorse for the devastation it leaves behind.” But labels like Sung’s are still taking a page out of the Zara playbook. “When I think of fast-fashion, I think of a massive tornado,” he says. Richard Sung, the co-founder of Las Vegas lifestyle brand KNYEW, knows what makes customers apprehensive about traditional fast-fashion retailers. But to the designers giving the inspiration, like Fear of God’s Jerry Lorenzo, some of these new-age fast-fashion brands are more like imitators than actual designers. And like their more corporate competition, brands like Represent, KNYEW, and MNML have gotten popular by flipping the hottest current trends into instantly-available items, while using social media and YouTube to reach new customers. These brands might not categorize themselves as fast-fashion, but despite their relatively modest sizes, they understand the importance of instant gratification to their style-savvy, cost-cognizant audience. They attribute these strains to divergent spending habits and the rise of competition, but it's also coming from the ground up-via young, independent, hungry labels that have used social media to attract young, trend-hungry customers. In the first quarter of this year, H&M had their first monthly sales drop in nearly four years, and Zara parent company Inditex SA saw profitability shrink to an eight-year low.
Interest in fast-fashion is, for the first time, waning.
As menswear became more like womenswear-more driven by “it” items from season to season-guys started looking for new ways to keep up with the revolving door of trends. Fast-fashion retailers like Zara and H&M were there to give them the trends they craved at a fraction of the cost (and often testing the boundary between "inspired by" and outright ripped off in the process). But swapping heritage gear for high-fashion looks put pressure on their wallets. It wasn't long before they were trading in Yuketen for Yeezy, Ralph Lauren for Raf Simons, and A.P.C. After the #menswear boom of the mid-to-late aughts, guys began looking in the mirror at their chambray shirts, raw selvedge denim and moc toe boots and wondering what was next for their sartorial lives.
0 kommentar(er)
