Siyeon Kim

To build the solid brand, fashion brand should contain their own philosophy to maintain their business. Brand philosophy can be specified in mission, vision and value proposition. Then why is it important for brand to have their own philosophy in the industry?

Mission they set, vision they see and value proposition they pursue shows what identity that the brand itself represent. In 2022, people and media are aware of sustainability, diversity and well-being in fashion. Well-being In fashion is how people feel while they are wearing the garment. For example, when people are wearing more artistic clothes, they more feel artist, and when they are wearing uniform, they more feel professional of their job. According to the tutor’s note, (Terrelonge, 2022), American psychological association (APA) insist wellbeing can be define as ‘A state of happiness and contentment, with low levels of distress, overall good physical and mental health and outlook, or good quality of life.’ In the lecture, lecture defined wellbeing into five sectors which are subjective, social, financial, physical and emotional. Brand should focus on meeting the needs of these five factors of consumer’s wellbeing. These can be their biggest mission and through this, brand can specify their vision in the business.

As concerns about abusing nature to create new clothing increases, most of the fashion brand’s vision is being sustainable and to have circular system. Especially when it comes to recycling and upcycling, the important thing can be to create some product that is completely different looking, to catch people’s eye and being sustainable at the same time. According to Gwilt, (2016, p 129), ‘within sustainable fashion circles there has been a movement to revive craft skills. Aside from creative approaches to repair, other popular techniques include altering, refurbishing and remanufacturing garments that might otherwise be discarded. In altering a garment, the aim is to make it appear different. Alterations may be slight, for example, changing a long-sleeve shirt to a short-sleeve shirt, or so significant that the original appearance of the garment almost completely disappears.’ As the author mentioned above, to communicate with gen z with their sustainable philosophy, being creative is a necessary part in brand’s marketing strategies.

Citation

Terrelonge, D. (2022) ‘The power of fashion: Clothing x wellbeing’. FT Yr1: Introduction to fashion marketing and consumer behaviour. University of the Arts London. Available at:

Alison, G. (2016) A practical guid to sustainable fashion. London: Bloomsbury.

‘Fashion Industry’ represent every single area that is related to plan, produce and purchase items that have particular style in certain period. Which means, the size of fashion industry is bigger that it seems. Editor Valerie in Britannica says some people distinguish between the fashion industry (which is high fashion) and the apparel industry (which makes ordinary fashion or “mass fashion”) but by the 1970s boundaries between them has blurred.  Then how each sector of this industry performs? In general, marketing area plans the product and the promotion. After products are made from the factory it goes to the small shops and for the last step consumer purchase the fashion items.

 Like every other industry, fashion industry is also extremely competitive. Each company needs their own know-how to survive. Mostly, brand’s goal is to get ‘Profit’. Then what is profit and how can the company can achieve their goal to make their own profit? This can be explained by economy. The tutor’s note (Zilka,2022) says that economy is the ways we meet humanities’ wants and needs.

 Our current economy is capitalism. Capitalism is a system that which uses ‘capital’: Financial, human and planetary (land resources) to produce goods and services to supply the demands of consumer. To against capitalism, new options are suggesting. Renewing Indigenous economy and cultural economy can be that alternatives. Unlike capitalism, it is skeptical in mass production and linear economy which has steps of take, make, use and dispose. With the idea of sustainable, company’s ideal goal has to follow those economy system to achieve their ‘Profit’.

 If it is unsure about how brands should take their marketing strategies, how can they decide between being creativity or being commercial. To be simple, mass production (commercial) represents capitalism while creativity or fine-arts related pieces more represent cultural economy. Even being creative and try to stay in circular system, fashion industry cannot ignore mass media and the commercial because it directly influences to company’s economy circumstances. According to this situation, company should focus to figure out this problem and sustain the balance between those two factors.

 For the conclusion, Profit, which is one of the 4 pillars in fashion marketing, means all the effects that brand or company can receive while they are working on producing items or ideas.

Citation

Steele, V. (2022) Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/art/fashion-industry/additional-info#history

Zilka, R. (2022) ‘Better lives: Profit’. FT Yr 1: 22/23 Introduction to Fashion Marketing & Consumer Behavior. Available at: https://moodle.arts.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1469957/mod_label/intro/Week%204-Monday-Profit%20lecture%209.30-10.30%20BL.pdf

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

Fashion Industry has been influenced directly to the environments all the time and is one of the big industries that was not eco-friendly. Nowadays most of the fashion brands are aware of this problem and tries to change their brand moto to be a sustainable. But what exactly is Sustainable fashion and how is it effects to this planet? The definition of sustainability is the ability to maintained at a certain rate or level. And Sustainable fashion can be described by prevent abusing environment and inappropriate human resources while producing fashion goods. it can be also explained by ‘circular economy’.

 Circular economy is basically a system that tries to recycle materials while producing new products and try not to waste or harm environment. Fashion Industry started to adopt this system for their new vision. The circularity in fashion can be explained by following steps. First, phase out substances of concern on microfibre release. Second, increase clothing utilization. Third, radically improve recycling. Fourth, make effective use of resources and move to renewable inputs. After these four steps, it will go back to the first step, and as it circles, fashion industry can solve the task of recycling and discarding of clothes.

 UN has suggested 17 ‘sustainable development goals.’ Together with those goals, they strongly insist that Industries should more focus on sustainability and make their long-term goal as becoming an eco-friendly company which contribute positive effects on environment. It is true that indeed, every single factor matters to fashion industry. However, the main factors that I want to focus among all is, ‘No Poverty’ and ‘Gender equality’. I insist these are the key words that play an important role on this industry.

‘Rana Plaza’ can be a good example. On 24 April 2013, Rana plaza in Bangladesh collapsed. This plaza was a big garment factory and as it collapsed, almost 1,132 people died and 2,500 people were injured. Workers there who were mostly women and girls knew that the building was not substantial even before this disaster, but they didn’t had chance to make their voices. This tragedy showed the world the seriousness problem of poor labour conditions faced by female workers.

Through this case people who works in fashion industry should be more aware about the situation that we encountered, and try to set a long-term goal to be a sustainable and fair-trading company. It starts by Individual change their point of view. As a part of the society, understanding and making effort to reach this goal can make this planet more healthy and beautiful.

Citation

International labour organization (2022), The Rana Plaza Accident and its aftermath. Available at: https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/geip/WCMS_614394/lang–en/index.htm

RIMARCIKOVA, Katerina (2022) ‘Intro to- Online Lecture’ [Recorded Lecture]. FT Yr 1, London College of Fashion. 3 October. Available at : https://ual.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=43000142-2334-45b9-8764-af23009fc0a0