Spring-Summer 24 fashion exhibitions
With Spring-Summer 24 selling season-opening, fashion experts are meeting sustainable brands. And so, we received invitations for panels and fashion events, aiming to facilitate the shift towards eco-conscious products. But the ultimate goal isn’t sustainability. It never is so.
Unfortunately, brands that have an idea of what sustainability is, aren’t understood by fashion buyers and showrooms. Indeed, both industry players had the same comments, which seems weird and leaves little hope for specific brands to find a market that would sustain their business in an evolved fashion panorama. But fundamentally, these comments say a lot about what sustainability represents in the fashion industry.
Fashion experts’ remarks on sustainable brands
We’ll guide you through some opinions we heard about these new brands:
1- Is this clothing collection sustainable?
2- This collection is too small. Why just a few pieces?
3- It’s expensive! Prices are too high. We want the same clothes at a much lower price.
Now the responses we would love to give, point after point and face to face, to the fashion experts:
To the very first question everyone asks when approaching a booth: is it sustainable?
What do you mean? Can’t you understand it from the size of the collection, style choice, quality and materials? Do you need a tag stating if a garment is eco-conscious?
The second one: your collection is too small!
Guess what! Capsule collections should be the way out from decades of racks packed with new items! The way out from overproduction! Isn’t a capsule collection more sustainable? It seems showrooms and buyers still need endless items, fabrics and colour options, which is the opposite of sustainable fashion.
Then comes the third request, which makes you understand these experts have no idea what they say: it’s expensive! We want this dress, but cheaper. Well, sustainable materials are expensive! And if that designer makes a specific dress in a much cheaper material, it wouldn’t make sense.
And so, the last request takes us back to the first: is it sustainable?
Why do you ask? What do you expect from sustainable brands if you ask for much cheaper materials?
Is sustainability the goal?
Dear fashion experts, buyers and showrooms, are you sure you want sustainable fashion brands? Do you know what sustainable means? It seems your ideas are confused, indeed. And perhaps those panel discussions have a different goal.
In fact, it sounds like your interest in sustainability stops at justifying your presence on the market.