top of page

Fashion Dose #7

  • campazine
  • Jun 14, 2016
  • 4 min read

Hi! This week's fashion dose is sweet and light, as there's nothing much interesting and big to be updated. June 14th marks the end of the 4 days London Collections: Men for Spring 2017, and June 18th will be the start of the Milan fashion week for menswear. The beginning of June's menswear shows actually kickstarts the beginning of the menswear and womenswear combination. For example, Burberry and Bottega Veneta are combining menswear and womenswear shows starting from this coming September, while Gucci will do this in 2017. Brands like Calvin Klein, Zegna, Costume National, Saint Laurent and Berluti are also not going to show their menswear collections.


Photo: Balenciaga Spring 2016 collection.


Interestingly, Balenciaga is holding its first ever menswear show in Paris while there're increasingly more brands combining menswear and womenswear shows. The advancements of technology, globalisation and the proliferation of imitations have been an invisible hand that forces the industry to respond to it, by introducing a SEASONLESS collection and slowly implementing a 'See Now, Buy Now' approach where you can buy directly from the store right after the show. While the obvious reason seems to be cutting costs, I personally think to prevent consumers from boredom (as we normally have to wait 6 months until we can get our hands on things we saw in the show) and to stop giant fashion retailers to copy their designs and mass producing it within a very short timeframe are the very PRIMARY reasons the designer houses need to do it. The luxury industry obviously rely on the exclusivity of the designs to lure customers, so it definitely makes sense for them to try something to stop someone from stealing their designs while the existing laws and regulations couldn't seem to really protect them.


Some people are worried that this is the end of the less popular menswear shows as many brands are following Burberry's path to combine the shows, but I personally like how Suzy Menkes concluded this phenomenon in this interview:

Photo: Suzy Menkes, international editor of Vogue.


"For 22 years, I did the men’s shows as well as the women’s shows when virtually nobody else was doing that.

And then, suddenly, the men’s collections flowered and became immensely important.

I think they’re now going to be reduced back to a natural state of things.

I certainly think that Zegna, which is a real example of men’s clothing,

is completely different from a brand that does men’s and women’s like Gucci.

So I don’t know how you divide those up, but I’d say leave more room,

more space for the genuine menswear companies and combine the others."

If you've followed and loved the SS16 collaboration between the designer Christophe Lemaire and Uniqlo that's released earlier this year, you might be excited to know that Lemaire is employed by Uniqlo directly now and is no longer for one collaboration only, but he will be the artistic director of a new Uniqlo's Paris R&D centre, and he'll also be designing a new line known as Uniqlo U that's set to be showed this coming July, while continue working on his own label. As one who is a sucker for timeless and classy daily wear designs, I'm definitely excited about this. The chief reason is that I could anticipate that it'll not be an 'inspired design' just as what have always appeared in other fashion retailers' stores, as explained by Lemaire:"It took 6 months to recruit the right people who understood it was industrial design, not fake luxury or fake fashion,". Uniqlo has been excellent on providing clothing for casual daily life and has strived to differentiate itself in terms of staples designs (and now I can get classy designs at Uniqlo, why should I not feel excited?) and of course, quality. I'm quite a firm believer in Japanese products, they always have a sense of aesthetic and improve the quality to its best possible in every product they produce. I'm just looking forward for this collection and I hope that they keep every piece as exclusive and limited as possible, just so to reduce the risk of bumping into another one who is wearing the same design as me. *greedy

According to a research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Texas at Austin, the fashion retailers often use our emotion to make us spend more-- REGRET, instead of sales or low prices. Retailers are making us to blame ourselves because we weren't buying that fast-moving piece of clothing when we first saw it. They punish us by offering only limited pieces, limited stocks of all sizes and new designs almost every week so we would quickly buy everything we like when we see it. This is a bad news if you are a fashionistas who would love to stay chic all the time, because you'll be the most likely person on earth to overspend in the stores like Zara (which successfully implements this strategy and is the pioneer of it). However, there's a cure for it, according to the article-- you look at the price first before you even look at the design, so you can control your urge of swiping your credit card.


Now you know it. Just don't look at the clothes first before you look at the price tag. However, due to the impossibility of seeing the price first as it's always hidden inside the clothes, you should just not walk into any fashion store if you don't wish to overspend. AHAH.


That's it! Till next week!


Comments

© 2017 by Campazine

bottom of page