The Future Of The Fashion Show..Fashionweekly..On Fow24news.com

The future of the fashion show is up for debate. With the advent of digital, the rise in the number of brands, the dominance of pre collections, and the increased attempts to directly target the customer, the industry has reached breaking point, which has prompted a shake-up of massive proportions.....
Now that Burberry has announced its plans to only hold two seasonless annual shows and make its collections available immediately online and in stores, and the news that Tom Ford has cancelled its New York show to adopt a see-now-buy-now model come September, the landslide affect looks certain to ensue.

Logistically looking at the fashion-show construct, it makes very little sense now," says Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman. "If you put a business consultant in to look at what the fashion industry is doing, they would think it was insane."

The CFDA's decision in December to do just that and employ Boston Consulting Group to explore viable alternatives to the current format, with the view to turning New York Fashion Week into a customer-facing event, has been a catalyst for the recent discussions. "We have designers, retailers and everybody complaining about the shows," declared its president Diane von Furstenberg in December. "Everything needs to be rebooted." A frank admission from someone in a position to affect change, but, for an industry famous for resisting it, what are the viable options being mooted?

During September and October the autumn/winter collections - and inviting customers instead of press and buyers is a popular option. The idea is to make the time between seeing the collection and being able to buy the collection shorter, therefore making collections more relevant to the time of year and increasing the chances of purchases before desire has dampened.

It also aims to capitalise on the social-media buzz surrounding a fashion show, when need/want can be instantly satisfied/gratified. New York designers Rebecca Minkoff and Thakoon recently announced they have opted for the "see-now-buy-now model" to do just that, while Burberry hopes to harness the power of the live streams that it has been broadcasting since 2009.

Elsewhere, brands such as Moschino, Versace, Dries Van Noten and House of Holland have been experimenting with the notion for some time, selling capsule collections (including as-yet-unseen catwalk looks) to online retailers ahead of the show happening, that drop in the weeks following the show.

"It is clear that brands cannot create faster"

But debate surrounding the topic raises the question of who are the shows really for? For the schedule to work, four groups of people need to be catered for: the retailers, the customers, the press, and the designers - and the demands from each group are different at each stage in the process.
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Browns' womenswear buying director, Laura Larbalestier, says that her business - recently bought by Farfetch - notices a positive difference in a label's performance when a collection is sold immediately after the show. "If lead times were made shorter, we would capitalise on the thrill of 'the new' that is created by fashion week," she explains, while Henry Holland tells us that he sees a surge on his e-commerce platform (currently the source of 25 per cent of House of Holland's total annual revenues) when an edit of his collection is instantly available.

Sales were fast and strong," explains Ruth Chapman of MatchesFashion, who sold the Versace and capsule collections, "but also limited in terms of quantities - the intention was to sell out straight away and we did." It's a savvy move, but how does this work for full collections and brands on different stratas?

"I don't think it would work better on the whole for luxury fashion to have a shorter period between reveal and delivery," says Chapman. "The customer is increasingly interested in the artisanal design process when she invests in beautiful items. The very process of this requires a complicated supply chain and sometimes an item can pass though many different artisan hands. It's just not possible to put any more pressure on these processes without compromising on quality. The customer is smart enough to know that."

Fabrics will always need 12 weeks make-time and a buy-now-wear-now approach cannot have further impact on the quality of a beautiful fashion product."

High-end luxury retail is one end of the spectrum, but, says Shulman, "the problem comes more - and makes less sense - in the middle market, where if you're going to put the money in, why wouldn't you say, 'Well I'm just going to address the people who are going to buy that leather jacket .
For the see-now-buy-now model to work, it means that everything shown would have to be available. Currently, approximately 20 to 30 per cent of what is seen on the ready-to-wear catwalks goes into production, meaning designers would either have to reduce the number of looks they presented; only show what had been pre-bought by retailers; or fall into a situation where they are making everything or on demand, creating a divide between the capabilities of different brands.

London Fashion Week regular is in an interesting position of bridging the gap between high-end and high-street fashion. "Topshop has always put the customer at the heart of the Unique show experience and embraces the see-it-buy-it mentality with the way it constantly creates newness throughout the year; it's a part of the brand's DNA," says creative director
This fast-paced way of delivering fashion, together with accessibility to international travel and the advancement of social media have all contributed to the changing of the fashion cycle," she continues. But then Topshop has the fast-fashion infrastructure in place to support the new demand, which can't be said for all.

"It's great for the people that have their own factories and have the machine in place to produce the things as quickly as they can, but for a lot of the smaller guys, I think it will be an absolute pain, as it's already really difficult to get the stuff made,"