People
People buy fashion items to express their identity and personalities. Mostly young generation leads fashion period and their moves influences fashion industry generally. Generation Z (or Gen Z for short)
,which represent whole people who were born in 1997-2012, is now leading trends. They are bold, iconic, and not afraid of trying new styles. Basically, Gen Z’s are changing the point of view of the world, especially in fashion industry. According to Corner (2014, p.39), “If fashion is ephemeral and superficial, what does that say about us? Like clothes, we fade and decay. Are we too just another type of ephemera or are we more than that?”. This is truly very complicated question and will have thousands of answers depend how readers think. As a fashion student I insist if we are ephemeral, it is clear that now it is Gen Z’s turn to shine and even if they fade out once, this period will be very important moment in fashion history.
In article ‘Gen Z beauty: diversity & inclusion strategies’, Author described Gen Z with following sentences. “Gen Zers are champions of intersectionality, neurodiversity and gender fluidity, particularly when it comes to how they engage with beauty. These young netizens are actively cultivating inclusive digital networks and communities, advocating change, and decolonizing the beauty industry for 2021 and beyond.” (Saunter,2021,WGSN). Then what should brand react to attract these rising consumers? What marketing strategies they should use to target Gen Z can be explained by few keywords.
First, fashion brand must focus on diversity. Diversity contains lots of different boundaries. It can be Generation diversity, race and Ethnical diversity, gender and sexual orientation diversity or interest diversity. There are some good examples of fashion brands responded to this topic. Rihanna’s underwear brand ‘savage x Fenty’ can be one of them. Brand itself is offering various sizes of clothing and model they use shows many different types of the body. Also, the beauty brand that she owns, ‘Fenty Beauty’ is doing a great job in diversity part as well. Items they have such as foundation and concealer have 59 different color shades for diverse skin tones from different races.
In addition, brands should consider their marketing strategies in future-oriented way to aim Gen Z as their potential customers. Such as NFT, companies are now mapping out and transferring their ideas into internet world. Generation Z was born with internet. They have strength using computer and they are flexible to accept new contents. In 2022, fashion brands also jumped into NFT market. They suggest idea to have virtual reality wardrobe to store NFT and customers can also try clothes on with using new technology.
With those two strategies which mentioned above, companies will try hard to attract this unique costumer ‘Gen Zs.’ It is hard to survive since this customer always crave for more interesting field and they are always ready to accept changes. Therefore, fashion industry should keep pace with this generation and look ahead.
Citation
WGSN, 2021, Gen Z beauty: Diversity & Inclusion Strategies. Available at: https://www.wgsn.com/insight/article/90330
Corner, F. (2014) Why Fashion Matters. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd