How Independent Fashion Brands Are Navigating the Crisis

The Business of Fashion Podcast

The Business of Fashion

Fashion & Beauty, Business, Arts

4.6 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

BoF’s Imran Amed discusses transparency, cooperation and disruption with Dries Van Noten, Anya Hindmarch and Stefano Martinetto, leaders of two early pandemic initiatives — The Forum and Rewiring Fashion — to share thinking on the role of independent fashion brands and retailers amidst the biggest crisis in the history of the modern fashion industry.

The fashion industry has long been operating in a cyclically inefficient and anti-creative way. Issues like waste, early discounts, power imbalances and a suboptimal, wholesale-controlled calendar hurt brands at every level, as well as consumers.

But when the Covid-19 pandemic prompted lockdowns around the world in early 2020, the industry was put on pause. In response, two initiatives, Forum and the BoF-facilitated Rewiring Fashion, emerged to make this period one of retrospection and discussion in hopes of bringing about systematic change.

In the latest episode of Inside Fashion, which features a conversation from VOICES 2020, BoF’s Imran Amed sits down with Van Noten, as well as Anya Hindmarch and Stefano Martinetto, co-founder and chief executive of Tomorrow London to discuss the lessons the industry has learned during the pandemic and how that new perspective will shape its future.

Candour has never been one of the industry’s priorities or strengths, which has hampered progress in the past. Hindmarch emphasises that there is a power to coming together. “You solve problems by not just thinking about yourself but collaborating as an industry,” she said.
Thanks to the rise of e-commerce and the convenience economy, storytelling is more important than ever for luxury brands. “Just showing clothes and that’s it, forget it. That’s not going to work anymore… I think we have to offer different things,” said Van Noten. “We have to tell a story to show why the clothes are more expensive than high street labels, you have to give the whole package of support to people who come to the store.”
Wholesale retail is changing — hopefully, to allow more space for creativity and development of strong products. Hindmarch thinks that wholesalers still have an important, localised role that helps designers connect with their buyers in a personal way. Martinetto believes shifts are for the better. He said: “The notion that wholesale is dying is most appropriately defined as ‘bad wholesale is dying.’”

Dries Van Noten’s ‘Forum’ and ‘Rewiring Fashion’ Join Forces to Rebuild the Fashion System

DTC vs Wholesale: Striking the Right Balance

The BoF Podcast: Dries Van Noten on Making Retail Meaningful in the Pandemic

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I think obviously you solved problems by not just thinking about yourself, but collaborating as an industry.
0:07.0	I think we all felt that.
0:08.0	We have been following the wrong mission of selling stuff, overselling stuff, producing more stuff,
0:14.0	dropping product in the season where the customer wasn't interested.
0:17.0	Now this season, we know that in January and March are not going to be fashion
0:21.6	shows again. So we can't embrace the limitations what we have. So we use, in fact, the fact
0:27.6	that we can't be a fashion show as a starting point to think about our collection and the way
0:32.4	that you're going to communicate about it.
0:41.8	Hi, this is Imran Ahmed founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion.
0:48.1	Welcome to the Bof podcast. This week on Inside Fashion, we go back to Voices 2020, where I had a conversation with three individuals who've been leading the thinking around how independent
0:53.1	brands can navigate the crisis.
0:55.3	And as you'll see, the challenges faced by smaller brands have been very unique compared to some of the big behemoths who have the cash and resources to wait through what has been an extremely challenging period for the wider fashion industry.
1:08.1	Here are Dries Van Notten, Anya Hynemarsh, and Stefano Martinetto at Voices 2020.
1:17.6	Brands that fall under the protective umbrella of big luxury groups could afford to wait out the crisis, delay their events
1:29.7	and product launches, and pivot to digital sales while their stores were closed.
1:35.0	However, it wasn't that easy for many independent brands whose businesses are heavily dependent
1:40.2	on wholesale revenue, income that was pummeled by the crisis, as orders were cancelled
1:46.0	and factories were shut down.
1:48.0	Shortly after the lockdowns began, two virtual groups of independent designers formed organically.
1:55.0	They met on weekly Zoom calls, rewiring fashion facilitated by BOF, and the forum led by the designer Dries Van Notton.
2:04.7	A few months later, within a few days of each other, both groups published manifestos,
2:10.4	encouraging the industry to think differently. In an attempt to preserve the vitality and
	...

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