There is permanency in everything that exists in the world today. If you are a fashion follower, then it is your permanent attire that comes into consideration. Fashion is maintained in two terms and that is short and long terms. Short terms vastly take aid from fast fashion clothing while long terms just ensure sustainability more.
Permanent clothes can be defined as clothes that will be in use forever. Clothes that will be re-worn again and again.
In most sectors, however, the story rings truer than in others regarding textiles-apparel-fashion. Traditions were discarded sometime during the last century. Ancient practices of repairing clothes were frowned upon, along with the tradition of handing down clothing from one generation to the next. A consumerist worldview was proclaimed as the only way to live and to do that you had to consume more. The mindless hedonism and reckless throwaway culture pushed the planet to its limits. Clothing was inexplicably discarded as quickly as possible with little thought or care.
While there had always been measures and ideas to combat this problem, they had always been overshadowed by the fierce and passionate debates over sustainability/circularity that have taken place since the 1990s. The pandemic has also fueled this debate, which is seeing the dawn of tangible business initiatives in the wake of the epidemic as it has in many other aspects of the industry.
The idea is hard to sell to in the industry, so there’s just one problem. This implies not only those sales can be expected to decline during the lockdown, but until eternity, and that you cannot, therefore, grow at the frenetic pace of the pre-pandemic days. In the discussion about circularity, many thought circularities simply meant that what came out from the end of the life cycle of a garment would go back into the system. You could keep growing as the circle got bigger.
The market demand also needs to be understood and the detailed analysis is provided below:
Fashion is inherently about vanity. Secondhand clothes, especially those worn by the homeless, can be subjected to complete derision like nothing else. Yes, once upon a time it wasn’t that way. However, globalization, the rise of the middle class, and fast fashion have led to people taking pride in brand new clothing while forgetting about giving clothing a second life.
Time has finally turned over. It is projected that the secondhand market in the United States will double in the next five years to reach $77 billion, according to ThredUp, an online consignment, and thrift store. Report espouses that resale grew during the paa endemic and will accelerate in the recovery from the pandemic. Approximately $36 billion is now spent on secondhand clothing, and resale will grow 11 times faster than retail clothing in the coming five years. Based on the report’s numbers, 33 million Americans purchased secondhand clothing for the first time during the year, and 76% of those buyers intend to buy more secondhand clothing in the following five years.
Consignment, vintage, and thrift stores have become increasingly popular over the last few years, even during the outbreak of the pandemic. Since then, Levi’s has made the shift. With Levi’s Second Hand, customers will be able to purchase second-hand jeans and jackets on Levi.com and return their unused clothes for a gift card to be used on subsequent Levi purchases. The retailers would receive store credit of between $15 and $25 for their old Levi’s jeans, depending on the quality. The clothing will then be listed on the platform for between $30 and $100. If the jeans are too worn to be resold, Levi’s will give an in-store credit of $5, and if they cannot be resold Levi’s will recycle the unusable jeans with Sustainable Panew celle:newcell of Sweden. In partnership with Trove, Levi’s e-commerce platform manages the backend work including cleaning, inventory processing, and fulfillment. Treve, a startup that provides re-commerce technology and logistics, produces similar services for Eileen Fisher, Patagonia, REI, and a few others. In partnership with Re: new cell, the company had already released sustainable jeans a few months earlier. 60 percent of the jeans were made of organic cotton and the remaining 20 percent recycled denim and 20 percent sustainably sourced viscose was made of Circulose, a breakthrough material developed by Renewcell.
One of Europe’s leading fashion reselling companies, Remix Global AD, was purchased by ThredUp Inc. The secondhand market in Europe, which was estimated at $21 billion in 2020 and will be worth $39 billion to the company in the next four years, aligns with the company’s plans. ThredUp has already signed partnership agreements with Vera Bradley, Farfetch, LG, and Madewell. Reflaunt was funded by $2.7 million in February through MadaLuxe Group, an international distributor of luxury fashion. As it executes its growth strategy and benefits more leading global brands with a variety of resale models, the investment with ll allows the flaunt to add top talent to its technology and business development teams. The Lithuanian clothes and home goods marketplace Vinted and Depop, acquired by Etsy for $1.62 billion, are also among those to have raised substantial amounts of the above.
The above phrases are all related to market analytics and your careful observation is bound to catch those big numbers.
Fashion is immortal. Self-expression cannot be achieved in any other way. Using clothes permanently instead of buying new clothes which had exquisite innovations is also a type of fashion that was underestimated before the pandemic.
Source:
https://www.fibre2fashion.com/industry-article/9171/clothes-forever
Image Courtesy:
- https://www.wallpapertip.com/wmimgs/80-802088_high-resolution-fashion-images-hd.jpg
- https://www.wallpapertip.com/wpic/bxibbJ_fashion-tips-women-fashion-full-hd/
- https://www.businessinsider.com/nordstrom-men-store-model-solve-department-store-problems-2018-4
Written by Rafiad Ruhi
