The shared values are the signature of the brand. And as an illustration optimicism has a direct impact on colors, rigor is translated through shapes and proportions, and being narrative has a direct connection with prints. So the asserted skills are expressed through the final balance of product categories, or specific fabrics. Leather at Hermès bags or ready-to-wear, outerwear at Burberry, or beachwear at Pucci.The definition of the targets in terms of attitudes and way of life are key. Most of the brands work with core targets and then, they need to define, to recruit, new ones. Then the brands choose to select the final uses. Some are daily, business, dressy, but the fact is that today the mixing is a more contemporary attitude. The positioning helps to understand the market environment, to focus on the differentiation criteria, and to define the price policy. Most of the time, the teams start with two inputs: the creative one and the marketing one. The creative team, or the artistic director, start with the inspiration of the season, often expressed through a moodboard. It's a kind of collage, with references to periods, to icons, to artists, places, colors, patterns. They give the first creative inputs, they decide the colors, they choose the fabrics, they design the shapes of the season, they check the fittings and then, they decide about the outfits of the collections. Then you have the product developers. They work closely with the studios and they have the connection with the suppliers, and they are very involved in the process of delivering the collections.
The merchandisers start with the analysis of the former collection, and they suggest the frame of the next collections. They expect widths of choice, the demands by categories of product, the request of the respective international markets, and the expected price range. Womenswear collections are probably the most complex between of the wide creative potential, the taste for permanent newness, and the extreme competition. Menswear is more about functions and accuracy within a more well-defined wardrobe, and the pace of change is not as strong as it is for womenswear. So working for the leather goods differs because of the life cycles of the products.
The bags are longer than in womanswear, and a successful bag may last for a few seasons and be declined in colors, fabrics and sizes. A successful collection is a creative one, as much at it is a commercial one. And I would say, on the long term vision, the challenges for a brand are to bring newness to the market, to express "zeitgeist", to be recognizable, while at the same time being faithful to its identity.
Seasonality, renewal and innovation
Why is the renewal system so important in the fashion industry?
Why is fashion, understood as textile industry, so obsessed with novelty? How does it happen that it is in the field of clothing production that the fashion system of collections’ renewal and seasonality has emerged first? Many authors explained it by reference to the psychological instability of women who are the main clients of fashion. For obvious reasons, we do not accept this thesis as explanatory at all today! So let’s look for a better story. Following a comparatist reading of the fashion industry’s evolution compared to other fields, the American sociologist Ellen Leopold observes that fashion production is one of the slowest industries to be mechanized. The sewing machine has but little evolved over time, whereas production devices in other fields, like car industry for example, were industrialized at a way faster pace.
Likewise, fashion was not affected by work division: one person kept realizing the entirety of a single garment (for instance, a dress). According to Leopold, the explanation of this phenomenon lies within the fluid nature of the raw materials: it appears that only rigid materials allow a large-scale mechanization. These factual elements allow the author to explain the quick renewal of fashion products (seasonality) without relying on the dubious argument of consumers’ unstable motivations. The fashion industry had to find a way to overcome the impossibility of global mechanization, as well as a growth strategy that is not based on productivity enhancing, through the valorization of handmade products. The cyclicity of fashion styles becomes the privileged tool for a field trapped into production hubs revolving around manual work. It is, indeed, the paradox of fashion, revealed by Leopold following her American fashioninquiry: in the absence of a real technological evolution, fashion fell back on the value of "novelty". There is little to no progress between a season and another: garments produced this year do not demonstrate any kind of improvement in comparison with those of last years, they are a variation on preexisting styles. Leopold repositions the promotional speech of superior desirability of new styles in an economic necessity context, dictated by the material conditions of production. Her analysis can be read as an extension of the Marxist vision of fashion and its "whims". The lack of real change is somehow compensated by a storytelling of constant renewal. But this renewal is gratuitous, as many fashion critics have pointed. As interesting as these critical studies might be, we must temper their conclusions.
First, Leopold’s case against fashion as a field where technological progress is weak might not be as relevant today as it was in the last Century. At an age where digital means might be used in dressmaking, thanks to 3D printing and artificial intelligence improvements, fashion could prove a rather innovative industry. And even more decisively, Leopold does not take into account the expressive nature of fashion. As we saw in a previous video, fashion often succeeds in articulating the present moods, hopes, feelings and fears. And this is one of the main reasons why it is successful: in modern times, social identities are constantly moving forwards in a process of constant redefinition. Fashion might sometimes be a substitute for real social change, but it would be unfair and quite superficial to make all fashion a collective lie intended for preserving the current state of affairs.
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