Fashion Is Changing. Where Will The Fashion Week Go?

As we enter the early spring season, 2020 autumn and winter fashion releases are coming into view. The fashion week in New York is also developing vigorously. During this period, a special fashion show attracted everyone's attention. In the city of New York, using the streets as flyovers, using their old clothes, discarded second-hand clothing, McDonald's food bags and foam packaging as materials, a group of people are wearing self-made "green clothes" to create a fashion show that matches the mainstream fashion industry. This is the fashion week protests launched by environmental protection group Extinction Rebellion.

Members of Extinction Rebellion spend a lot of time just showing the industry a "100% sustainable" fashion show. What they want to say is, "if we can achieve 100% sustainability, we should have more resources." Among the people passing by them, there are no lack of rush to attend Fashion Week activities, the most famous fashion designers and designers in the world.

After the end of the show, members of Extinction Rebellion introduced their demand for the fashion industry to the crowd, including the need to stop using pure polyester fibers, achieve carbon neutralization by 2025, and adopt a circular supply chain in the entire fashion industry, and stop the extraction of non renewable resources from the earth. Taking into account the carbon emissions generated by passenger traffic during the fashion week, they also question the necessity of fashion week.

Radical environmental groups?

Referring to Extinction Rebellion, perhaps you still have an impression on their 2019 London spring and summer fashion week, wearing a fresh turf coat and roadblocks to delay the Victoria Beckham show. In September of last year, Extinction Rebellion held the most "horror" Fashion Week protests in London.

Occupy the streets outside the headquarters of the fashion week, put the coffin inscribed with the words "LFW 1983-2019" and "Our Future", and cast fake blood on the outside of the hall. Protesters who are full of fake blood jointly staged a "death penalty scene", hoping to make the world reflect on the life lost by climate change.

In recent years, the Extinction Rebellion, which was all kinds of protests and aroused heated debate, was founded in 2018 in Britain. It has become a global environmental movement in a short span of two years. For these protesters, targeting the fashion week is due to the fact that fashion is one of the most polluted industries in the world. Extinction Rebellion even wrote to the British Fashion Council (BFC) to urge them to cancel London Fashion week. As the latest 2020 London Fashion Week has come to a successful conclusion, it is clear that their goal is far from successful. But this series of protests will inevitably lead us to ponder over the fashion week itself.

Why do we need fashion week?

Many people may question the necessity of the fashion distribution activities around the world. They are like bubble dreams, so that many brands spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars in less than 10 minutes. What is the reason why the brand is willing to pay the price?

The most direct role of a fashion show is to arouse the attention of the market and the media. A successful show can get attention and comments from social media and reports from various fashion media, though it is difficult to quantify, all of these will help enhance brand awareness and sales. As Agentry PR founder Erin Hawker once said, "after a fashion show, an average brand can get 50 to 100 media exposure every day, and even millions of social media shows, which are far more than the cost of investment."

On the other hand, fashion week is also an opportunity for young designers and independent brands to emerge. In fact, only fashion week can bring together the most influential people in the industry, the most authoritative fashion media practitioners and buyers from all over the world, and this brings opportunities for designers who are talented but not yet known in the industry. Accordingly, fashion week has become the driving force for the evolution of fashion industry.

Fashion week is also a very positive thing for retailers. Not only will it help further understand the situation of commodities in the new series, but also in the fashion week environment, retailers can quickly aggregate the industry's reactions to make accurate judgments and eventually turn them into sales. From designer to media to customers, everything in the fashion industry has formed a straight line here, keeping the fashion system closer.

In addition to these positive effects, a truly fashionable fashion show brings the appeal of fashion week to become the most exciting and important part of the industry, and it motivates the whole industry. This is also one of the most important reasons why it will not end easily.

Fashion is changing.

In fact, compared with the damage caused by clothing production to the environment, fashion shows have little impact on the environment. But as the highlight of the fashion industry, Extinction Rebellion often takes the lead in fashion week. It is also a good opportunity to catch the attention of the fashion industry, so that more people can pay attention to the grim situation brought by climate change and join the ranks of environmental protection. At the same time, the worry of Extinction Rebellion is not entirely unreasonable. Fashion week as a established fashion activity has not changed much in a long time.

Although in the past five to ten years, fashion week has been trying to catch up with the changing fashion pattern. For example, the combination of men's and women's clothing show, public ticket sales and increased participation have become the new trend of running shows, but obviously, this is far from enough.

More and more designers realized the shortage of fashion week system and chose to withdraw from fashion week in recent years. For example, the 3.1 Phillip Lim has been steadily moving forward in the fashion week's blueprint since it started building the brand in 2005, but it announced the abolition of the Fashion Week exhibition last year, opening its 2020 spring and summer series to a smaller audience in the open-air warehouse of a brand.

2020 the autumn and winter series of Helmut Lang also abandoned the stage of fashion week. The creative director Thomas Cawson came to India photographer Sunil Gupta, who was famous for taking portraits of New York Christopher Street gay group. He photographed the models for the models. These images of Helmut Lang 2020 autumn winter series will be exhibited at Helmut Lang boutique on Washington Street, replacing traditional fashion shows in this way.

Although most designers still believe in the importance of fashion week, there are obviously many brands that are changing. They are developing Pop-up extensively when they quit the fashion week. Activities, shooting short films or photographic works, fashion parties, will combine more elements of performative and experiential elements into the industry, and achieve the goal of brand communication at a lower cost.

Where will the fashion week go in the future?

Turning back to fashion week again, in the 2020 ten year of the new fashion week, social media has opened up the "democratization process" for fashion, and in fact has brought greater changes to fashion week. The intersection of social media and fashion does not seem to lie in clothes, but in those who record the present, but in any case, this network technology has undoubtedly become a new fashion marketing tool. It can not only provide more abundant digital display methods, but also make smaller brands stand out in front of consumers.

YANG LI, a Chinese designer from London, released the 2019 autumn and winter series to the models. They used their own way to take the self portrait of the YANG LI new series of costumes, and simultaneously released them to Instagram during the fashion week in Paris, creating an unprecedented "instant digital media fashion show". YANG LI is inspired by the American writer William S. Burroughs's prose, and, as the author has advocated in her work, the "automatic" writing style, in fact, YANG LI has also created a more "real" fashion week display.

In Copenhagen not long ago, Carcel echoed the protests of Extinction Rebellion. The Carcel 2020 autumn and winter fashion show begins in the form of short films. There are rows of chairs and T tables on the site, but no models are shown. The brand founder, Veronica D 'Souza, requires all guests to walk over the overpass, suggesting that people in the industry can abandon old systems and create new vision for fashion.

As a highlight of the industry, fashion week is still of great significance. When sustainable fashion is no longer just an option, it becomes an essential part of the fashion industry. With the further integration of digital advertising strategy into the fashion industry, we seem to have reason to expect more positive changes in the fashion industry.