I’d like to think I’m a pretty socially aware gal. I recycle. I volunteer. I buy organic, sustainable products and use a reusable bag whenever and as often as I can. But I’ve always had a weakness for clothing—lots of it.
Once a year, I perform a ritual “closet cleanse” and donate all the clothing I haven’t worn in the past year to the Salvation Army. It’s helped me realize (not proudly) how little I once considered the social and environmental impact the production, manufacturing and purchasing of clothes has on the world.
Since 2008, Americans have spent $250 billion on clothing and accessories every year. Worldwide, the fashion industry employs 25 million people. That’s an enormous amount of lives being impacted by American spending.
In my search for easier ways to shop consciously and understand the impact this pleasure of mine has on the world, I recently came across a new column in Good Magazine, Ethical Style: Fashion Advice for the Socially Conscious.Its author and creator Tabea Kay raises interesting questions to both companies and consumers. Why has the industry been slow to respond to its increasingly socially-conscious consumers? How can caring consumers who lack industry know-how spot the difference between greenwashing and actual commitment to better practices?
For companies in fashion, an industry that’s long had a bad rep, this is an opportunity to creatively use brand to change the way they’re perceived in the world. It’s time to listen to the people who buy their products and change their business practices to give consumers (like me!) more ways to feel good about associating with them.
So how do you shift the conversation from apathetic to empathetic, from pretentious to considerate?Some brands are beginning to make headway in sustainable business practices: H&M has integrated organic and recycled raw material in their supply chain and Stella McCartney has been called “a forerunner of vegan fashion.”
Still, in H&M’s case, their sustainability efforts are dulled by a focus on throwaway fashion that only lasts a season. The waste piles up in our closets and then, our landfills. In regards to Ms. McCartney, her line, as ethical as it sounds, is hardly accessible to the main street consumer. The solution doesn’t scale.
Part of the problem is linguistic. Most industry leaders don’t have the language to conceive of what “ethical fashion” could be. To help, a U.K. non-profit called the Ethical Fashion Forum has begun creating guidelines for sustainable fashion. They call it the “triple bottom line.” Ethical Style summarized it briefly as “a sustainable company must consider the people, the earth, and the bottom line.”
I applaud the EFF for providing information and sustainable guidance to fashion industry leaders, but there is still another gap that needs to be filled. Consumers also need better language and information to guide their shopping decisions; in this sense, fashion is several large steps behind the food industry.
As consumers become more aware of their role in the global economy, new factors affect all of our buying decisions: What we buy and where it comes from reflects who we are. Right now, this presents a challenge, but also a unique opportunity for fashion companies to educate and engage their customers. What if they looked to the food industry as a model for how to build consumer loyalty by giving them more information?
Back in the days when I was running a jeans business, every 6 months we would take part in trade shows.This was where you would ‘set out your stall’ and all of the cool stores would come and place their orders for next season.Our first shows ever were Coterie in New York and Project in Las Vegas.
The scale of these shows was incredible and Radcliffe was up against some of the richest denim brands in the US – opposite True Religion, who had built the equivalent of a western saloon bar, down the road Seven had recreated a Los Angeles Penthouse and Earnest Sewn I think had built an entire log cabin.Everyone had also spent a great deal on amazing models and imagery.
How wasa small British brand to compete?We had no money to build a trade stand, so instead creativity triumphed over budget.We found a beautiful photo of an English drawing room with windows looking out onto an English garden in full bloom, bathed in sunlight (we were selling spring summer).We blew this up into room size wallpaper and lined our trade stand with it, recreating effectively the drawing room of an English stately home.Anyway, it was very cheap and simple, but all the buyers were very enchanted…
I was reminded of this when I was looking at these 2 brilliant retail concepts.Both are clearly inexpensive but absolutely beautiful. The first is the Trading Museum from Comme des Garcons in Tokyo – the only shop fittings are display cabinets from the V&A – filled with CDG products.I will admit to being a bit of a display cabinet addict though…
The second pictured is a pop up from Aesop at the Merci store in Paris, in place for 1 month.Again, super simple, lots of brown boxes with Aesop on them contained within a fishing net.
Gone are the days of avoiding the Internet. The prevalence of digital and social media has made it imperative for luxury fashion brands to have an active online presence. Facebook pages, livestreaming fashion shows and e-stores have made brands, like Gucci and Prada, more accessible to everyday shoppers.
The Internet has enabled high-end fashion brands to expand their reach, create a more direct relationship with their consumers and receive instant online orders. However, the problem with making luxury brands more accessible is it puts the risk of making the brand seem ordinary.
To quote Jean-Noel Kaperer, a luxury marketing consultant, “If too many people can buy it, the brand loses its exclusivity.” This is an important concern, but the services and merchandise that are available to the wealthiest and most loyal customers may not be accessible online. As Cori Galpern, worldwide marketing and advertising director for Tom Ford International, said on a panel at the Wharton Marketing Conference, “The core for a luxury brand is a customer with considerable wealth.” This means that luxury brands have to pamper and create vastly personalized experiences for their core customers.
Despite the ubiquity of digital and social media, the in-store experience is still integral to producing individualized experiences for high-wealth customers. “Even though the products are available to view online, it is not the same as the experience of seeing them in person,” said a business analyst at a high-end fashion brand in a recent interview. Viewing the product in a store enables you to touch it, learn more about the story about the collections and build a face-to-face relationship with dedicated sales associates. Digital and social media can amplify in-store experience for high-wealth customers, but shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a substitute.
Catering to the wealthiest consumers has always been a constant in the luxury industry, but fashion houses have to keep innovating on their customer experiences to stay ahead of their competitors – both on and off-line. When looking at ways to innovate, fashion houses should think about ways for not only core customers to keep coming back, but to inspire potential customers to become engaged with the dream of their brand.
The challenge for luxury brands is in evoking an aura of desirability across broad audiences, while curating individualized experiences for their core customer base. Luxury brands have to develop strategies that promote both accessibility and exclusivity. Digital and social media can help increase awareness of and perpetuate the myth surrounding the brand, but they must be carefully curated in order to maintain an impression of exclusivity. Furthermore, these channels should be viewed in the context of the store experience.
What do you think are the most innovative examples of fashion in digital and social media? Which luxury brands are creating the most accessible, yet also exclusive experiences?
Gap is looking to reconnect with today’s customer and become even more relevant. It needs to offer customers something that’s different, like the SoCal youth of Hollister or the edgy attitude of All Saints.
Gap has been about all-American basics and, in recent years, brands like American Apparel have done basics in a fun and sexy way. But are we tiring of the ‘all-American’ story? Gap needs more than just iconic American style to get people excited.
Crowd-sourcing new ideas in the wake of such heavy criticism could be their saving grace but co-creating logos feels so limiting in the grand scheme of collaboration.
By engaging in dialogue with the customer, Gap has a real opportunity to get under the skin of its brand and its customer, right now it doesn’t seem to know or understand them. This co-creation shouldn’t be just about logos but about its role in people’s lives.
It would be great to see this project go beyond image and start to act as a platform for participation, from create your own iconic t-shirts through to suggestions for future collaborations. Gap has a heritage in doing so with designers like Valentino and ranges like [RED] so there is something to build on and take further.
It’s time for Gap to be bold and brave with its future. It needs to stand out confidently with a new story to tell. Today’s news of Gap scrapping the logo shows a brand that is willing to engage and listen to its customers. After all in today’s world brand is less about what you say and more about what Google says it is. Some may argue the move has damaged their brand and its credibility in social media but by acting quickly they have an opportunity to do something more valuable than a logo competition.
After publishing with a blackletter logo since 2007, Fashionista decided it was time to reconside and redesign its stoic face as well as swap its back-end CMS from Movable Type to Wordpress.
The old logo was this oversized, domineering, gothic lettering thing that said “spiky, aggressive, old-school news brand.” That’s not what Fashionista is. The editors of Fashionista are excellent journalists who will be critical when it’s called for, but they’re also unashamedly fashion lovers. They might poke fun from time to time, but they’re not spiky or unnecessarily aggressive. And they’re also inherently new-generation when it comes to how they go about their business — they use a blog platform, Flip cameras, smartphones and various social media to deliver their content and engage their audience — so unless we were being very ironic with the gothic, old-school newspaper font thing it just wasn’t really appropriate. I’m also a big believer that the logo and furniture on the site should be a little subservient to the content — it’s the content that engages and the content travels well beyond the site too — so we also needed something a little less imposing. — Jonah Bloom, CEO/Editor-in-Chief, Breaking Media
