The CFDA's New York Fashion Week review says market is "ripe for change"
The CFDA has released the report outlining the key findings of Boston Consulting Group's (BCG) review of New York Fashion Week and says "the time is ripe for change" in the market. The report, which was the key output of 50 interviews carried out by the consultants, suggests that Fashion Week's role could and should change without suppressing current manufacturing timelines.
An increasing number of brands, such as Burberry and Tom Ford, have announced recently that their catwalk shows at key fashion weeks would be focused on in-season product, the so-called "see now, buy now" approach. While others, such as Rebecca Minkoff and Michael Kors, have shown capsule collections of in-season product alongside the main collection for the next season.
It was moves such as these that prompted the CFDA (owner of NYFW) to engage BCG to review how the event should be positioned in the future. The report's key findings were somewhat unsurprising. They highlighted the massive impact social media had had on Fashion Weeks, effectively turning what was once a trade event into a consumer event, and the misalignment of retail drops with the season and weather.
KEY FINDINGS
- Technology has made fashion shows – originally mostly trade events – accessible to a vastly larger audience in real time, amplifying excitement around designs up to six months before the product is available.
- Deliveries have been pulled forward, resulting in more misalignment with the actual, physical season, triggering early markdowns and reduced full-price selling, and furthering consumer confusion.
- Several designers and retailers observed two significant consumer trends impacting business: the rise of a “buy now, wear now” consumer behaviour, and an accelerated adoption – and also accelerated fatigue – of trends and designs.
- Fast Fashion brands have gained the ability to deliver interpretations of designs to retail before the actual designer collections that inspired them.
While to stress that the CFDA would support designers in whichever approach they would like to take in future, the report presents three possible credible scenarios for Fashion Week moving forward.
POTENTIAL FUTURE SCENARIOS
- Keep retail and press appointments / presentations as the "culmination of the design process" to allow buyers to place orders and provide long-lead press with original content early enough, but make them more intimate and exclusive. Designers are advised they will need to control the release of images from such presentations; long-lead press representatives told BCG they do not need a "bells and whistles" presentation at this stage.
- Consider creating bi-annual, "in-season consumer-relevant activations" during or after New York Fashion Week around the main and pre-collections to be delivered to stores immediately and for the next several months. These would not necessarily be traditional catwalks but could be digital presentations or parties/other events. Nor, said the report, do all the looks need to be "shoppable" to allow designers to retain more artistic presentations of their collections.
- Consider a hybrid approach where a shoppable in-season collection is shown alongside the main collection for the next season. According to the report, this approach was preferred by luxury brands since it enables them to build excitement for the next season, keeps the show as the culmination of the design process and removes the logistical issues of decoupling the trade event from the consumer event.
Beyond the approach for the catwalks the report also highlighted the need for further discussion around retail deliveries and better aligning those with the season in question.
The CFDA concluded by stressing it would keep the dialogue open with the industry and will not promote only one specific solution at a time. "[We] will encourage designers to try and experiment with new concepts and will foster continued conversations on the topic through stakeholder meetings, panel conversations, and workshops throughout the year. The CFDA owns the New York Fashion Calendar and will accommodate all types of shows and events and continue to support all designers regardless of how and when they show," it said.
